DS spent all his loan at Freshers

[Howlongtilldinner]

As the title says..he has £30 (personally I think it's less) to last him till his next instalment in Jan. He assures me he's paid his accommodation, I've bought (and will continue buying) his food.

He has the max loan amount because I'm a LP on a low wage, spent around a £1000 on a PS4 and going out.

He obviously can't manage on what's left (he's applying for jobs) but I'm loathe to just give him cash to buy alcohol and have fun, when he's not budgeted at all!

Can anyone please give me some sound advice

What an idiot. Don't bail him out whilst he still has the PS4.

One of my friends spent her entire student loan in a few weeks at uni and then had to live out fo her overdraft.

She was too embarrassed to tell her parents. Her mum couldnt pay it back but her dad could have (they were divorced) but she still didnt tell.

Your DS sounds a spoilt brat. It cant have escaped his attention that you are a one parent on a low wage. I didnt escape mine.

Why are buying his food still?

Just leave him to it, they have to learn the hard way. He's got no money, fine he sells the PS4 or lives out of overdraft and gets a job in the summer to pay it all back.

Ha ha what a silly boy.

TBF I wouldn't sell the PS4. Once purchase it is a cheap form of entertainment.

He has food (from you)
He has entertainment (PS4)
He has accommodation.

I'd leave him be and he can get a job if he wants to go into town drinking of get a bus to lectures ;-)

18/19 year old uni brats are the worst! I was the biggest brat going.

You may judge yourself a brat but your generalisation about other students is way off the mark.

My student son had the brains to wait til Black Friday to buy a PS4. ;o) Think he got it for £150-ish... He is autistic so obsesses about money and good at saving. In that way his disability works hugely in his favour - he's the only one of my older sons who've all been to uni, who never has an overdraft! His younger brother left uni this year with loads of debt - despite getting a grant as well as a loan as we're on minimum wage. He is stupid with money and we stupidly thought a few years 'in the real world' will teach him, but of course... it didn't. Leopards and spots, etc. Both brought up by us and both set the same example, given the same sermons, helped to learn them to budget - one is a spectacular success with £s - the other, hopeless.

All you can do is food (keep it spartan), no alcohols, totally nothing else so he spends the rest of term repenting his ways, hopefully.

He could approach Student Hardship fund which is better at some unis than others - but get him to do all this himself, so he learns the hard way.

I know my feckless son bought expensive things then sold as the term went on - all that happens there is, they're friends swoop and get bargains. And he'd have to then watch his friend with his fancy headphones, or whatever. But by Year 2 he did start getting part time jobs as well, to stem the tide of debt and disaster. His brother is in his 2nd year now and comes home at the holidays with a couple of hundred quid still left! Because he's good with money, we sub him. (Hard for us on a low income but we do what we can). We refused to sub the one who was stupid with money.

he needs to get a bar/waitor job, simples - when he has a job then maybe consider topping him up

He's got food and accommodation and something to do.
Tough. He'll live till January.
(And this is from someone with dd in first year, was out every night in freshers, goes out loads still, lived on pasta till loan came in late.)
Time to grow up quick.

I spent half my loan in the first fortnight of my first term at uni. I just didnt keep track of how much I was spending on nights out, and before I knew it I was down £500. Luckily I had an overdraft facility so I managed, but it really was a great life lesson. Much better to make this kind of screw up (and suffer the consequences) at a relatively young age than once you have real grown up commitments like a mortgage.

I didn't even contemplate asking my parents for more money, they would (quite rightly) never have given it to me!

Every chain store in the country is currently looking for retail staff for the Christmas rush. Same for bars and restaurants and probably the Post Office/couriers.

He should have no bother getting a job to last between now and Christmas at least.

If he doesn't have time to socialise as well as work, study and play on the PS4, that'll learn him, as they say.

He's got a roof over his head, you're providing food in his belly. Don't bankrupt yourself to bail him out. He needs to learn. This is a wonderful life lesson. If he wants to go out, he can sell his PS4. When I went to university, I met a boy like this, spent all of his grant in a short period of time. He ended up selling his expensive gadget that he'd blown most of his money on. It happens regularly.

I was financially irresponsible at Uni - and my parents did keep bailing me out (I'm an only child, they had recently split up so there was some guilt there, etc). It wasn't until I was about 25 and I ran up a massive credit card debt following a break up (to be entirely fair it was mainly on sensible things like furniture) plus I'd not had a great deal with my car finance and was due to make a huge end of term payment to keep the car and my Mum ultimately helped me out by taking out a loan of about £8k in her name. I was (and still am) utterly mortified by this, paid it back and am now ridiculously good with money.

What I'm trying to say is nip it in the bud! I wish my parents had stopped subsidising me sooner, I would have learnt a valuable lesson far sooner. I would do a £20/week shop (if you can afford it) of pasta, soup, bread, milk etc and leave him to it. If he wants more money, he can get a job or sell the PS4! In the long run you will be doing him a massive favour.

Can he walk to lectures/classes? Does he need materials or books for classes? Are bills included in accomodation?
I would only give him the physical food.
I agree with above he really needs this lesson.
Do you think telling him to sell PS4 or leave him to it, if he doenst get a job in time he will figure out he will have to sell it. Prob best to figure this out himself, and the resale value.

I ate porridge and reduced food/charity shop clothes. (I did do some activities and trips). I only just made it to January by doing that, so he really needs a wake up and I think it is absolutely fine to have no drinking nights out (just go to pub, dont pay in, drink 1 coke, walk home)/no new clothes etc until jan.

Don't loan him money.

Agree with the rest but please please be aware he may end up getting himself into trouble with overdrafts. You're not meant to be able to get more than one student overdraft in the UK I don't think, but I managed no problem.

By my first Christmas at Uni, I was overdrawn by £4000 split between 3 banks. Took me until I'd graduated and got a proper job to pay that back (my part time Uni jobs were spent month-to-month).

My mum used to do Tesco home deliveries for me too. If she'd have just given me the money, I'd have spent it all in Topshop and the off-licence.

By the way, a brand new PS4 with controllers and 2-3 games costs £300-350, so either he bought about 12 games with it too, or he's not being completely honest about what he spent on what.

He will be fed, clothed and has somewhere to live. I would see how he gets on.

Op maybe you need to teach him budgeting skills and teach him the value of money so this doesn't happen again, because he is also going to have to live frugally until January.

Also hammer home how it was an utterly stupid thing to waste all his money if it hasn't sunk in for him yet. You may want to point out to him that it is an extremely expensive task supporting a child through uni as a single parent on a low wage, hopefully he will get the message. Also say he is ex

Look, do NOT bail him out, he has a roof over his head and food on table. If he wants more play money, then he will have to get a job.

Does he have a credit card? I only ask because (many moons ago) I was in halls with an idiot who not only spent his loan but put £500 of designer clothing on his student credit card. He then made minimum payments and the interest cost him a fortune.

Selling the ps4 sounds like an essential first step but I would also make sure he doesn't have access to high interest debts such as credit cards and he understands just how stupid he has been (if possible).

It is what students do. Dont sell the PS4- he will only buy another 1 later. Maybe he can rent it out!

My eldest didn't but 2 of her 6 housemates did. He will survive. Get a student overdraft. Live on tinned soup. Hopefully he lives with nice girls who will help to feed him (my DD and her friends fed the 2 in her house regularly)

make sure he has loo roll- no one like the student who uses the loo roll but doesn't contribute.

I think that even on a full loan it isn't meant to be enough to live though is it?
So he would have needed additional income form elsewhere.

You have to financially prepare them for uni.

SuburbanRhonda
You may judge yourself a brat but your generalisation about other students is way off the mark.

I think 1wokeuplikethis was saying that 18/19 YO brats are the worst, but she didn't say that all students fall into that category - just the brats

(I was one, too).

A ps4 doesnt cost 1000

Are pS4s really £1k?
I thought they were about half that?
he must have bought up a load of games and add on gadgets to go with it.

Introduce him to CEX or similar.

And post-Christmas sales.

The benefit of going to Uni is not just the degree that you (hopefully) come away with after 3 years.

It's the life skills and experience that you pick up along the way and learning to budget (or face the consequences if you don't) are all part and parcel of that.

Getting mad at him won't help because the decision of what to do next is entirely his own. If you can afford to, make sure he has a small amount of basics in for the next few weeks (bread, beans, cereals).

He won't starve, he has a roof over his head and he will quickly learn a very valuable lesson. He needs to sell his PS4 and get a job ASAP but it won't be you that influences this decision, it will be the peer pressure from his new friends and flat mates.

Freshers Week is just the start - most students are out pretty much every night in the first year so he's going to have to quickly figure out a way to afford that and manage his finances.

To those that say your son sounds like a 'spoilt brat' - just ignore! He's a typical lad finding his feet at 18 years of age and I'm sure he will figure it out and be fine.

Deep breaths

This did make me laugh. He can get a job, it won't kill him. Hopefully he'll learn.

is he at uni in a cheapish place?

This made me laugh too
It sounds like what my younger cousin almost did a few weeks ago. She paid her rent. Her left over cash she wanted to buy iMac laptop. Before she pressed the buy button she decided to calculated her money. The balance was £40 to January.

Stupidly she thought she would get interest free loan from her bank and live on that. This was meant to pay for her £40 a month phone bill too.

Am glad she listened to me and not bought the laptop. I hope she hasn't. She has an iPad which can do a lot already do her accommodation is next to the library with computers.

Your son is not an exceptional case. Asking him to pay you back is not going to work. This happened at uni a lot where some students spent their money on drugs and alcohol. They ate expired or out of date food dumped at the back of supermarkets. Some of the girls ended up with sugar daddies because of poor money management and working not being good for the lifestyle they wanted.

I like the idea of you doing the online shop of basic food for him. Anything else he will have to work for it. He is lucky you even want to contribute at all.
Tell him to get a job.

Dear cousin has applied for some now.