how much a week for first year student at uni?

[millsyj]

How much should one give to son starting university a week/ month? accomodation+food is sorted....so really we are talking socializing?!

How much should one give to son starting university a week/ month? accomodation+food is sorted....so really we are talking socializing?!

What about coursebooks and laundrette? Are they all sorted, or need to be bought on top? And train/bus fares?

also books, stationery, local travel/bike costs/other? depends a lot on whether food is in halls and, therefore, the student might not always eat it. Is there also access to a kitchen?

I give my son £50 a week to live on (including food) ...if he wants more he can get a job. He does use my Amazon account for books.

We gave DS1 £150 pcm each ( £300 in total ) for the 9 months of the student year, as his loan only covered accommodation and he had nothing over. He was at Oxford so with the 8 week terms and high workload he could not work in term time. He worked at Tesco on the check-outs in his holidays though. We will do the same for DS2.

Ds1 is going to York
His loan leaves £1000 of the halls still to pay some are covering that.
He will gets £45 for food from me and DH, his natural father is giving him £50 a month plus extra when he can.
We would cover extra costs as we do now, clothes, train fares, odd concert ticket etc

£45 per week I meant to say

We pay DS1s accommodation and let him keep his maintenance loan, which is approx £3200 for the year (so about 370 PCM for 9 months of Uni yr). He pays for absolutely everything out of this, including a new laptop when his broke. I think it's plenty! He works during hols but not term time.

I think about 300 per month is about right. does he know how to cooK? I just ask because I did and saved a fortune by not having to buy expensive ready meals/ takeaway. I lost a stone in my first term and managed to get all my washing up and a few drinks in lieu for cooking for hall mates. It would also make him very popular with the ladies ;-)

We gave our son £350 per month (not weekly as we felt he needed to learn to budget on a monthly basis) last year and expected him to cover all food, washing,clothes and social life. We paid for his rent as we were keen to keep his loan low. This year we expect him to get a job and will be deducting this from his allowance. He has also worked during his summer break and this will cover any luxuries. As a musician we have helped with the odd expense but he knows we are not a bottomless pit and we have encouraged him to stand on his own two feet.

My DS1 has just finished his first year and we were shocked how little he spends on socialising. Student clubs can be really cheap and a lot of his friends are quite skint so they dont do expensive things. They get a taxi back from nights out but because it's split 4, 5 or 6 ways it works out cheap. They don't eat out at restaurants and don't go to see expensive bands.
If you want to make budgeting easier you could agree to pay for books, travel home etc directly and then you can decide how much you want him to have for fun money.
Alcohol seems to be the biggest cost for some students. (according to my not that reliable DS). My DS doesn't drink alcohol because he doesn't like it strange, I know and he thinks it saves him us loads and loads.

DS 1 had a lot more expenditure in the first year, when he was joining things, going out with new people etc. than year 2 when he knew what he liked doing and who with, and year 3 which was intense study for finals and not much socialising.He did manage to save a bit of what we gave him but as he is now moving to London for his first, not very well paid, job he will need it to get set up.