How much does your DC spend on food while at uni?

[Ineedcoffeenow]

Trying to work out costs for when DD (hopefully) goes off to uni next month. She’ll be in Edinburgh. How much does your DC spend on food each week?

Yes, agree a delivery is good for keeping an eye on the spend before the checkout…and being able to remove or replace items if going over budget. It’s harder to do that at the till of the supermarket. and if shopping daily or several times a week, smaller shops mount up quickly.
most supermarkets have a minimum order of about £50. Sharing a delivery makes achieving that easy.

A good gift for a student could be an off-peak delivery saver pass. They will even bring it upstairs if you’re in a flat!

How did your dd get on with this?

My ds is starting in September and I have no idea how much to give him for an allowance.

Do you mean food in total, or food shop?

We buy DD a big shop twice a year, and she otherwise spends about £30 a week at Lidl. She does spent other money on takeaways and eating out though :)

We give £50 a week- shop is around £30/35, weekly wash and dry is £5 and £10 for a weekly treat. Anything else they get from savings from their holiday job that they come
back to when they are home

Mine spends about 50 per week in Tesco but he then buys lunch out a few times a week and dinner out once a week on top of that which we cover.

My DS and DD are spending £40-50 a week each out of their student loans. Whenever I drop them off / visit I tend to take them on a big shop at my expense including laundry/ cleaning/ toiletry stuff too, and stocking up on frozen stuff as well as fresh for the next few days. Both of them are quite a way from home (naturally in opposite directions) so this is only once or twice a year for both of them. It cost close to £150 last September for each of them. They arn’t extravagent, and do cook mainly from scratch, typically stir-fry, risotto, pasta dishes. I set them up with cooking equipment and crockery / cutlery / kettle etc at the outset, some new and some stuff I never use, they both say the most useful thing I got them was a set of 6 Tupperware boxes that pack up like Russian dolls. They are both quite canny about using nectar cards, etc and getting things on offer. Find out what equipment is provided at your DD’s accommodation, it can vary. Sometimes absolutely nothing (so kettle was needed) but sometimes quite a lot, the place my DD is in this year has a kitchen well stocked with cooking equipment for example, but this is likely quite unusual.

The Edinburgh Uni website suggests allowing £400 a month for food which sounds very high!

study.ed.ac.uk/undergraduate/fees-funding/fees-costs/living-costs

We swapped things around in the end and pay for DDs accommodation. She buys food out of the loan. She spends very little—lives off about £25-£30 per week for food, but we have done a few big shops for her. She’s turned out to be a very careful spender.

One at UEA and one at York- both spend about £45pw and cook from scratch, mostly Tesco and Co-op.

I did a shop of cupboard staples (pasta, sauces, tinned tuna) about £100 when she first moved up. She spent about £50 the first MONTH. I think £30-40 is reasonable. But remember they may need things like sanitary/hygiene items over and above.