Cost of student accommodation, I could cry

[ElbowsUpRising]

So Dd has found out today she’s been accepted into Manchester and is looking at accommodation, of course all the stuff she likes is £260 a week. 51 week contract as well! It’s all the fancy, swish stuff though she is adamant the reason she wants the expensive stuff is because she’s prioritising her safety as she wants something close as she’s “terrified of getting raped” if she has to walk back to her digs late at night.

she won’t consider a house share, she won’t consider cheaper halls a bit further out.

so accommodation is looking at 13k a year! She will get minimum student loan so think that’s 5k.

she won’t be able to work partly due to her health- she has fibromyalgia but nowhere near bad enough for PIP. Also she will be doing architecture Masters which if anything like her undergraduate degree will be too full on to be able to work as well.

so we will need to find another 8k a year plus however much she will need per week for food, etc. I’m guessing over £50 a week. Nearer £100 a week? So another 5k. How the fuck do people find 13k a year?

im trying to impress on her the difference that cheaper accommodation will make on her (us) and she’s just going nuts and accusing me of risking her safety and putting her at risk of being raped!

Is £260 a week normal?

Sorry, we had to beg them to change her when people dropped out

With every update you posted this just got worse and worse. It sounds very much like your daughter has become an expert at getting what she wants through a number of different tactics and that’s left her with a real sense of entitlement. I’d be tempted to tell her you won’t help her financially at all if this is how she responds to your kindness but as you have let her think you would finance accommodation maybe say you’ll pay the cost of the cheapest accommodation and she has to fund the difference given she’s had access to a large amount of funds and could choose to spend it more wisely.

No, just money we put aside each month.

I think she needs a serious sit down chat about priorities and about being a cheeky entitled madam, though it sounds as though that might be very hard for you to do. Is there anyone else who can speak to her in the situation, or who she would respect if they intervened? It sounds as though you are fairly enmeshed and she has little to no respect for you - but would another trusted adult (grandparent/aunt or uncle) pointing out the issues with her behavior help?

You have a budget and cannot extend that further - so she has to work within those constraints. If she isn't paying you for accommodation then she needs to contribute to the household in other ways

She has the money from the savings and anything else she works for.
So she has to make a choice - use the saved money for the indulgence of traveling or use the money to top up for the accommodation she wants. Go traveling, blowing through money that you made the effort to save for her future or get a job and take some responsibility for herself. You will not be able to help further than your budget and will not be listening to emotional blackmail when the situation is caused by her own indulgent, childish choices.

I would point out the hypocrisy of being somehow being well enough to travel, and take all the risks that come with that (including to personal safety) while not being able or willing to get even a part time job, and demanding to be coddled with perfect non-shared accommodation in her post grad. I would also stop all the research for her, checking bus timetables, presenting her with alternatives so she can shoot your suggestions down. Does she need you to plan and sort her various planned trips in the same way?

If you have to have a confrontation with her I would advise planning what you will say and rehearsing some things beforehand so you are prepared for the escalation/emotional pull when you place your boundaries.
Any emotional blackmail, tantrums and screeching should be met with the following 3 lines of argument, very calm, grey rock.

1. The budget is fixed- we are supporting you as much as we can afford short and long term (having saved you 20K and paid for your Canada trip) but there is no prospect of more money.
2. If you want a particular type of accommodation you will have to find a way to fund it - by working or choosing to use your savings for your post grad year rather than traveling.
3. You are an adult now who has signed up to take this postgraduate degree at this university. You need to research accommodation, transport, budget and make your own choices.

Don't try or offer to solve anything, present alternatives or cheaper accommodation, research buses or anything. That is her job - and anything you do or say will be shot down/torn apart or used to blame you - so why expend the effort.

If she threatens to cut contact with you now or in the future (after you have finished paying for her degree) then keep it calm and respond
I would be saddened by that as I love you, but you are an adult and I have no control over you if you make that choice.

I'm very sorry she is so horrible to you OP. That must be incredibly hurtful for you and is very undeserved.

My dd paid £123 for halls 2 years ago, I stated she had to have the cheapest ones end of

Architecture is a brutal career. Life as a graduate is going to be far more full on than a masters and a part time job. They work so so hard and such long hours for very little pay.

It doesn’t sound like a match for her really.

Pft.

Tell her what your actual budget is. She can decide how she wants to spend that.

If its not enough for the accomodation she would prefer, then she will have to find a way to resolve that problem - she is an adult, thats her responsibility.

I have wandered all around manchester from around 13 to 20ish, I really doubt it's got any more dangerous/rapey than it was back in the mid 1990s. I would walk up and down Oxford Road to go to gigs at the various Uni venues by myself or with an equally young and 'of zero use in an attack' friend. Used to go to Jilly's and stay for the all nighter, getting the first tram back to Bury in the morning (not when I was 13... more like 15!).

Worst thing that ever happened after a gig is the night bus stopped once, when some twats on the front were trying to set fire to the seats, and the driver booted us all off and left us halfway through Cheetham Hill. Again, no one was attacked, no one died we just had a fuck of a long walk home! (We did not walk all the way, it took us so long that the trams and buses started running before we were anywhere near.)

The only uni accomodation I'd not be keen on is the student HMO's out in Salford, they're a bloody long way from any campus and its a pretty scrotty area, no more dangerous than anywhere else and may well have been tarted up by now. However its going to add a lot of travel to the beginning/end of the day and its a very depression place to live. I had a boyfriend lived out there for a while and it wasn't my favourite place to visit (and I compare to some of the nastier areas of Bradford and also Lancaster).

hang on, when I was an undergrad architecture was a 7 year degree.

are you saying you’ve funded her for 7/8 years, and are looking to fund another?

plus her travels?

I think it’s time to stop. if it comes down to it I may offer a loan, but she pays it back. Fixed loan, low interest rate, she budgets with that money. As soon as she starts earning she sets up a dd.

My dd lived in halls and then fallowfield for her last two years. Thre's the night bus and fallow is full of students around at all hours so pretty safe.
In her last year she staeted working in the city late at night and was fine, again lots of people and students around. If ever in doubt she would get an uber.
Think the most we paid was £700/m inc bills for a room in shared accommodation or house.
We bought a 3 monthly bus pass and she spent less than £50 a week on food.
We lent heavily into savings and still haven't made it up yet!

This!
Do not allow your DD to guilt trip you like this. She sounds selfish and entitled, and is being helishly over-dramatic here. Put your foot down and go for the cheaper option, or she can find a job and pay the difference.

I couldn’t give my eldest any money while an undergrad, as I was struggling with my own rent. The middle one lives at home while at uni.

I’d leave her to sort herself out on a postgrad. Plenty of women share flats in Manchester without getting sexually assaulted.

My husband stayed here as a student. It would have been just over 10 years ago but we walked past recently on a trip to MCR and I would have no issues staying in that area and walking back now as a single woman.

It's a stressful time and I appreciate your daughter is probably (badly) expressing more general and understandable anxiety around leaving home. But suggesting you don't care about her safety if you don't fund the most expensive en suite halls is manipulative. I would suggest how much you can afford to support her, fill her in on how much she should expect to spend on food, transport and other basics and ask her to choose halls independently. If she is short of cash then from choosing expensive halls she will need to cut back on other things. It's the only realistic way she will make a different choice in her 2nd year.

So she has completed an undergrad, I’m assuming she’s at least 21.
Throwing hissy fits about how you’re going to get her raped, she sounds like a right dick.
Tell her to get fucked and work for a year to save up for her masters instead of expecting mummy and daddy to bend over backwards.

Do you have any other kids OP? Have you posted about her before?

This kind of situation is exactly why I don’t want kids

Give her a budget and she can find somewhere for that amount (plus anything she earns over summer which I assume she is doing). Alternatively you could suggest she defer her masters so she can live at home for a year and earn 13k to afford her luxurious student lifestyle next year. There are “unsafe” parts of every city but provided she applies common sense, she’s unlikely on the balance of probabilities to become a target. A house share is a sensible idea (she could choose a female only house) as she is then even less likely to be wandering alone in the area.

How did she know about the account you set up? Weren't you the signatory?

This behaviour didn't just 'happen' so it's not going to suddenly stop unless you change YOUR behaviour and response. She knows you will give in to whatever she wants because you've clearly always done so. Why on earth would you pay for her flight while she's demanding you also fund the accomodation she feels she's entitled to. It is such a ridiculous situation, her demands would be laughable if you didn't always enable her.
She can work and/or figure it our for herself. If she can travel the world, she can sort out her own Uni. It's an awful thing to have to acknowledge OP but she's not a nice person and she has zero motivation to stop treating you like a doormat.
She has money. She's not going to use it wisely unless she has no choice. You know this about her so you either watch her spend it all on her wants or you make some changes. Otherwise she will forever continue to play you like a fiddle without a second thought.

How old is DD? If she wants the most expensive accomodation she needs to get a job to pay for it. I don't think you should be subsidising her rent to the tune of £13k pa!! Plus fees? What are you paying £20k? She has to learn you have what you can afford.

Unless her fibro stops her living a normal life in every other way she absolutely can and should work part time around her studies. My child as disabilities and their uni works with them and they work (biomedicine) and works part time as a carer. We pay all car costs and contribute weekly for food and laundry but everything rent included comes from student loan and working. Your DD needs to be an adult and learn to live within her means if she won't work

No one needs to do masters - she can work for a year or two save up and do her masters then.

She sounds very entitled you need to stop indulging her.

@ElbowsUpRising you can message me. I know it well.

personally wouldn’t live in Hulme as the public transit links are not as good as the Oxford road links to Fallowfield.

hathesage is right near to the hospital so sirens and can be a bit sketchy at night.

fallowfield, withington, east didsbury have a lot of students/ halls. Great bus and tram links depending and cycle lanes about.

if you can’t afford a certain halls, you can’t afford it. Just life isn’t it. No shame in that. It’s an amazing privilege to have parents willing to fund you through an MA anyway. Good luck!

I always point out that funding DC through university needs to be taken into consideration on threads where posters ask "shall I have a 3rd, 4th, 5th etc child?"

These women generally don't have children above primary school age and they have absolutely no idea how much older children costs these days.

she sounds extremely manipulative. Cutting off contact because you said no, threatening to cut contact again. Saying you’ll be responsible if she gets raped is abhorrent. You are in an emotionally and financially abusive relationship with your daughter

This. She either has some sort of personality disorder or she has been allowed to get her way her whole life, never been given clear boundaries nor expectations of behaviour, and never taught gratitude or appreciation for you as her Mother. And this is the result. She clearly has absolute contempt for you and, to be blunt, thinks you are her bitch.

Her behaviour is beyond appalling.

You need to step back and make it clear she needs to fund herself, and that you won’t tolerate her attitude anymore. She thinks she had all the power by threatening to withdraw her ( toxic) presence from your life. Show she hasn’t by drawing a line and telling her you no longer tolerate how she treats you and will put down the phone / remove yourself from her: stop helping her in any way, each time she speaks to you with disrespect.