Anyone else find their student has a better lifestyle at university?

[elliejjtiny]

Does anyone else's student have a better lifestyle at uni than at home?

I was expecting him to have a great time but when I was at university part of the experience was that you were poor and you had to slum it a bit.

Ds1 has a bigger bedroom at uni than the one he shares with ds2 at home. The university is in a big city amd we are rural so he can easily walk to lots of different places, there are more choices of shops etc. He has more disposable income than we do so he can buy better food.

The food is the biggest thing. He buys a lot of food that we can't afford so he moans when he comes home that there aren't expensive crisps, we have tesco own brand pizza etc etc. I remember wanting to come home where my bedroom was bigger, nicer food etc but for ds1 it's the other way round.

Living in a city centre within walking distance of multiple amenities, be they those of the university or municipal amenities or commercial, is a massive upgrade in lifestyle for children coming from rural or suburban areas. Which is not to say that I don't think rural life has lots to offer, but it's not great for late teens to early 30s when people need to be learning about the world.

On the food front, I don't think our children ate better as students than they did living at home!

I remember going on an accommodation tour at a university and every other student coming out and complaining that the rooms were really small.
DD went in and said "it's massive!!".

Other than the bigger room, student accommodation is not as nice as our house at home though. She shops in Lidl and buys cheaper food.

I'm comparing living in a city with living in another city though. I suspect DD would say the main advantage was a better bus service in her uni city.

I was the same as your child. Had a bigger room, city life, more friends, bf at uni. My parents lived in the stix, there weren't even busses. Add to that whenever I went home Mum and I were at each other's throats. If I had had my way i would not have returned home after uni. I failed to find a job and we couldn't afford a flat on just my bfs wage, so we each went home for a year, worked/saved like mad and moved out at the earliest opportunity. Food was a different matter, my Dad was VERY good cook and always used top quality ingredients. I don't like cooking and have a very small repertoire of meals i can cook well, I ate a lot of takeaway and was often fed by bfs parents. Bf worked through uni so could afford inexpensive meals out.

Is he spending his way through his overdraft on this nicer food etc?

I shared a room at home, my parents both smoked heavily in the house and car and to be honest I was glad of my own room and absolutely over the moon that no one could smoke in the house I was living in.

You are lucky he wants to come home for the holidays as if he hasn't moved his stuff out of his uni accommodation then he does have somewhere else to live. I used to go to my boyfriend's house for a large chunk of the holidays because he lived in a rural idyll in a converted barn.

We thought when our eldest went to uni we would be sending him treats through the post but he can afford to buy himself all these things so the novelty of some things has worn off. But, I am really pleased that my children have not lived in poverty which I did both growing up and at uni.

Maybe frame it that you are grateful it shows him another way to live. I would talk to him about his attitude though and if he wants and is able to he can always contribute financially so that everyone gets to share these more expensive items.

I didn't eat better at University but I did eat differently. I grew up on a farm and was used to lots of home cooked food that we had grown ourselves (plus the usual 1980s weird ready meals like Findus pancakes or Vesta curries). I had olive oil and avocados and (proper) curry for the first time at University (ETA: and fresh ginger in savoury food rather than dried ginger in baking - mind blowing!). My rooms were similar size (not small, not enormous) but yes, living in a big city was fantastic in comparison to living in the country. I averaged a gig a week while an undergraduate in Glasgow (then went to Oxford as a postgrad and was horrified at how uncool it was). But being a young adult with no responsibilities is always fun and living away from home and being exposed to a different way of life always is exciting at that age and that's all your seeing. He'll come to appreciate home again as he gets older.

Food's nicer at home for mine, but their rooms are similar size to those in their halls and neither has ensuite here but they did in halls. But the freedom, loads of friends on their doorstep etc is such an improvement on here where all their friends live miles away and they need lifts because the public transport is shit etc.

I only went back for a couple of months after graduating, even though my parents house was bigger and nicer and a lot of my home friends were still around I just didn't want to live with my mum again, she was so fussy and disapproving about everything. One of mine is home after graduating last summer and I am very conscious that I don't want to be like my mum was to me.

This made me smile as we live off-grid in the middle of nowhere and we have to be efficient with water use etc. We also cook on wood and don't have microwave, dishwasher, tumble dryer etc. We always joke that our boys go back to living in luxury at uni with their fully equipped kitchens and limitless hot water! 😂

A large part of the value of residential universities is having a completely different lifestyle.

I’d not long been divorced when my eldest went to uni. So my contributions were based on previous household income. Indeed, for two years I had £25 per month to feed myself and the dog. My DCs had more than that each week! They each still managed to get themselves in a financial pickle in their first years and were a bit surprised that mum couldn’t bail them out and they had to plead with their DF who up till then paid the bare minimum to support them in HE.

I’ve never been more relieved to get a big pay rise just after my DC2 went to uni and I could afford to eat properly again.

DCs still complained that their rooms were and that they had to get part time jobs at uni.

Are you funding him? If he can afford to eat better than you perhaps you need to reduce how much you’re giving him!! You shouldn’t behaving to scrimp and save if you’re giving him so much he’s eating better than you. Or is it just different priorities…when I was at uni I spent a fair bit on going out and drinking. It sees students these days do a lot less of this, so maybe he’s saving there and spending on nicer food which is fair enough.

Otherwise, if it’s all loans, then it’s his money he’s getting in to debt with, it’s up to him how he spends it. If he’s moaning at the food you provide perhaps point this out. It may be wiser to take a smaller loan and eat less fancy!

Thank you. I'm not funding him, he gets the maximum loan and he has a part time job. He doesn't drink so that saves him quite a bit and he is usually there when there is some kind of local event offering free food. The local church does a thing once a week for students with food so he goes to that when he is free. He and his friends tend to socialise in each others houses (they live in what looks like a housing estate but for students and each house is 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen) and sometimes they will all bring some food, play card games etc so he isn't spending much on socialising either.