anyone with DC in 6th form boarding? pocket money question

[mumoverseas]

DS is going to a UK boarding school from September for his A levels and I'm trying to plan ahead ref his pocket money and work out a realistic figure for what he will need per month. Obviously all his meals (except I suppose if they go out on Saturday pm/Sunday) will be included but then there are going to be other litle extras.
Anyone in this position that can give a good guesstimate?

Some of the kids have serious amounts of money, some very little, but you are probably looking at something between £30 - £60 a week depending on what needs to be paid for (train fares to guardians? odd pieces of clothing?) and how near to London they are.

Also you have to be quite strict about disciplining what you DS can put on the school bill as this is sometimes used as an easy way to get extra pocket money and it can add up to a huge amount of money if you're not careful.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for that info BM. Its just so hard knowing how much to allow and I don't want to start off too high I have no doubt that there will be the 'rich kids' there that I can't and won't even try to compete against, I just wanted to try to find a reasonable figure. I'm not expecting him to need train fares to guardians, he will be at school most weekends and his guardians are his aunt & uncle who will probably visit him occasionally or pick him up for the odd weekend with his cousins

Hadn't even considered that he might be able to put stuff on the school bill, thats a scary thought!
I guess its a case of see what happens the first month or so and try to adjust. I just don't want him to not have enough when I'm 3,000 miles away.

I think that our school provides quite nice food and they have toasters etc in the Houses but you wouldn't believe how much the boys spend on takeaways.
Are you factoring the cost of his mobile into your calculations - it's an essential piece of equipment!

oh god, hadn't thought about takeaways and his mobile. Think his pocket money is going to end up being around the same as the school fees per term

LOL. Do the school allow them to do part-time work?

I would let him work out the budget - a useful excercise in growing-up and independence.

If it does go horribly wrong and he's skint by halfterm, surely it's not that difficult to transfer money around the world these days?

Good point about takeaways and mobiles, and also they go out for pizza and so on an awful lot. They all build up massive CD/DVD/ipod music collections as well, because that appears to be their main social location of identity. Ipods and mobiles go missing all the time because there are always one or two children in school who are total kleptomaniacs, so it doesn't make sense to be too attached to personal property, or spend too much on good stuff.

Unexpected things that can be put on the bill (depending on the school) apparently include train tickets all over the place, non-academic books from school book shop, sometimes tuck, uniform from school shop when they lose theirs and can't be bothered to look for it, emergency extra pocket money when a sob story is told, sometimes phone cards, stamps, toiletries, etc etc. My DD managed to spend hundreds of pounds in one academic year on utter rubbish, until we wrote to the school and made a fuss about this, as she got plenty of pocket money anyway and it was ridiculous.

Sorry if this is all starting to sound complicated, but we are battle-scarred boarding school parents!!

oh god, best I start thinking about re-mortgaging the house then!
DD's boarding school is much easier. They suggest £70 per term for her school, they keep the money and dish it out at around a fiver a week (I guess they know what 12 year old girls would be like with too much in one go!)
oshgosh, you are right about him growing up and independence. The one positive thought I'm hanging onto is that he is quite responsible with money and understands that it doesn't grow on trees, unlike his sister. Just not sure how much more he will need as he will be allowed a lot more independance than her (at a different school anyway) as I think the 6th formers are allowed out at weekends and maybe some evenings.

We found it helpful to talk to other parents and benchmark with each other so it didn't get too silly.

I think it's much better if the school caps the amount and dishes it out, like seems to happen with your DD.