To ask if you have a child at University and you pay towards their upkeep…..

[Haleso]

What do you do when they come home for the holidays? Do you carry on paying them the same amount, do you reduce it or stop completely?

I just pay him a lump sum each term, and he uses that. In holidays, I obviously pay for house stuff - food etc.

Stop. If they want money then, they can earn it working.

We don't pay him when he's back, he's fed by us and has a holiday job anyway to cover his socialising and peteol/car expenses.

Set amount/term for living expenses. Up to her how she makes that last. Once home we are “keeping” her anyway so no funding then. She will get a job for the summer

In first year DS was in halls, so I stopped paying in the holidays (and he worked PT). Now he’s in a flat, I’ll keep paying because his bills (except food) continue whether he’s there or not.

Same. We provide food etc. If they want money to go out / do stuff etc they either need to budget for it or earn it.

I carry on paying it on the understanding that, while I do the bulk of the shopping, any extras required while at home come out of their own money. If they save any then it's a nice bit of money when they head back.
We aren't over generous but give enough & dd very rarely asks for any more money while at uni but would take the mick a bit back at home!

I carry on paying the same amount monthly

Because DC has a very small weekly amount from us, I do pay in the holidays as well just so there is a small cushion. They have worked on top as well.

I pay their rent, they keep the maintenance grant and need to make it last all year. Obviously if they're at home then they won't need normal food. I also top up their Oyster while they're here and their mobile is part of a cheap family deal which I pay for.

I looked up the difference between loan she would get and what the maximum loan is and that sum forms the basis of our calculations - it's about £4000.

I asked if she would like it given termly, or monthly or whatever; she decided that monthly would work best and requested that it was paid for 12 payments of £335, rather than 10 payments of £400.

She saves a bit in the holidays because I pay for her food here (and she often does a bit of paid work in our local pub when she's home), but in the long run it's a the same amount of money and gets her used to the idea that you have to build up a cushion with your income to cover expenses spread through the year.

I pay £800/mo to cover rent, bills, food, transport. I pay that regardless of holidays because it’s a private let not a student let and the rent/bills are still due over the summer. They only come home for short visits as holidays are taken up by work or research internships or summer field schools. We send occasional top ups for books, train tickets home for a visit, etc.

They do have a PT job and use it for clothing, sports gear, socialising and savings towards moving to a graduate job city or moving to a post graduate degree course city. Whatever they decide after graduation.

We have a rough policy of we pay for the essentials, and they pay for the hobbies/nice to haves.

We also pay for her mobile phone as it’s on a family plan. And her contents insurance for her flat.

I calculated the top up for the year (based on maximum loan minus actual loan received) and then divided it into 12 equal monthly installments, so they still receive it when at home. We cover food costs when they're home, but they pay for bus fares, lunches while at work etc. It works well for us and means they usually accumulate some funds over the vacations to use in the following term. They all work in university vacations which helps.

We worked out how much we would give him per academic year and then offered him the choice of whether to be paid weekly or monthly and whether we would distribute it over the 9 months of an academic year or 12 months.

He chose weekly payments over 9 months, so I won't pay him anything over the summer.

I pay a set amount each week, which is the top up. They also have some paid work. I don’t suspend the payment during the holidays.

We've always done this, pay 1/12 of the top up each month, more like a salary would be paid.

We give them money weekly, from mid-Sept until end of June. Up to them how much time they spend at home. Remember they won't always be at home for all the time that is out of term time. Mine have stayed for their University job commitments amongst other things at other times. But have sometimes picked up their jobs at home.

We pay the difference between her maintenance loan and halls cost which approximately 2.5k. We then give her 200 per month plus we pay phone, Spotify and Netflix. She comes home most weekends to her part time job. She is home now for a month and is working 20 hours per week. I think it’s reasonable to reduce her money to £80 for the month?

We don't pay during the summer, she works then. But we do continue paying during other holidays.

We paid the difference between the full loan and the amount they were able to claim. Given they were on tuition plus minimum loan, in effect we paid the rent. On top of that, any travel, including a significant amount for the course.

We just pay the same amount all year round, monthly.
We can afford it and it makes it easier to set up - for us.
We also wanted dd to be able to continue doing work experience and volunteer work relevant to her course and future career in the holidays, as well as coming away on holiday with us (if she wanted to - she still does so far) and by still giving her the money it meant she could do so.

Thanks everyone. It’s good to hear what other families do. It is my intention to save what we don’t give her and use it for the next academic if she needs extra supplies or treats. I just really want her to learn the value of money!

Stop over the summer. They’ve got jobs/internships to pay their way.

We paid ours for 10 months - a September to June. July and August they either got jobs or saved or used overdrafts