Step parenting and Student son moving out....advice appreciated

Errata

If he's not eating properly because money is tight, and not heating his accommodation properly because money is tight, you may well find you have a sick student on your hands. He's 17, still needs good nourishment and warmth etc - he's still growing ! It's not his fault the place has storage heaters, don't make him pay the penalty for your heating decisions.

Your husband may soon discover he investment is riddled with damp.

liney

Steph998 wrote: »

Actually, there is another post in the Utilities board which I put up about his Electricity usage ages ago. They were using twenty pounds per week for electricity alone. We think it was the storage heaters being so gutsy, so they have switched them off and are now using the gas fire which is also metered. Since switching off, electricity has gone down to 14 per week. Gas used about three pounds per week when they had it on occasionally, it will probably go up now for winter and without the storage heaters..

He hasn't bought clothes since he moved in, and needs new shoes soon. I know they are non essentials....but he also has to pay for his tv licence, phone rental, broadband, contact lenses, bus fares, chemical engineering books etc. Not to mention his social life!

Ok so the Gas/leccy is about right then.

Clothes i included

Phone and BB should be about £30 pm/ so 15 to him, ie less than £5 per week.

Contacts - not sure - don't wear them, but can't be that expensive as so many people wear them. £5 per week?

How much bus fare? You can get weekly passes which may be cheaper.

Books - What did he spend his loan on?:cool:

Social life - Not an essential although he still has money left over in this budget.

Have added another £10 per week, then plus transport... £52 per week.

I know it's not nice having to budget so tightly but it's what people are forced to do on a limited income. Students especially.

shirlgirl2004

Steph998 wrote: »

He hasn't bought clothes since he moved in, and needs new shoes soon. I know the following are non essentials....but he also has to pay for his tv licence, phone rental, broadband, contact lenses, bus fares, chemical engineering books etc. Not to mention his social life!

Maybe not essential but if my son couldn't afford those (well except the social life) then I'd be helping him out.

liney

shirlgirl2004 wrote: »

I think you'll find the £850 was the loan. He can't spend it twice

As we all know it's the little "extras" that add up. A couple of pounds here and another couple there and before you know it there's nothing left. If transport is as expensive as it is here then I hope he's bought a bike because our buses are £2.50 a day! Mind you my sons spends a fortune on puncture repair kits and new inner tubes so I'm not sure how MSE it really is :rolleyes:

If i was using it twice i would have used his income at £90 not £70. The loan has been used once.

It's a hard life. But there's always someone worse off than you.

Steph998

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

The fact that he got off so easily from the terrible things he did is already sending him a really bad message; I really hope that you didn't contribute to such a lenient sentence.

Not sure what you mean, did I contribute to a lenient sentence? How (not why) exactly would I have done that?

Yes he did get off easily, and I too worried about the signals that sent out. In the six months leading up to the court case, we had told Daniel he could even get a custodial sentence for what he did. We had him him wound up to the max. He was terrified of what was going to happen, and I made the most of it. I wanted them to throw the book at him in court. But, because the Procurator Fiscal had made a mistake in the citation which was only discovered in Court (it was written that he had 'not more than 80ml of alcohol in 100ml of blood'. This is not over the limit) they could not prove if this was a typing error, or Dan was NOT actually over the limit, so the charges had to be dropped.

Steph998

liney wrote: »

Books - What did he spend his loan on?:cool:

Paying his driving fine actually. The first part of it anyway.

Anyway, his loan is ongoing. It is paid monthly. He is doing chemical engineering and the books he requires for the first year are thirty five quid each on Amazon, and we have tried every where to get them second hand. Not easy.

shirlgirl2004

liney wrote: »

That's £42.50 per week - he has at least £70 per week plus his loan, plus the extra work he should be doing in holidays to subsidise his term time income. He's not got a bad deal even when deducting additional travel costs. Plus he's not got a dodgy landlord who won't fix the heating/hole in ceiling/lock on the front door etc etc.

The way that read to me is he should be spending his loan on living costs not books, paper, pens, printing, computer disks, binding for projects etc etc.

These things are not cheap.

You keep mentioning travel costs as if they are really cheap. In my area a weekly bus pass is £7.50 for a local pass. That is a large portion of his earnings.

I'm not saying he can't manage on £70 I think it's about the same as unemployment benefit so he should be able to struggle through. But what if he's ill, he probably wouldn't get sick pay and he's not in a position to save for a rainy day. Coming up to exams he'll probably have to cut his hours too although longer term he will be able to do more hours in the holidays but he has to get there first they are a long way away.

Steph998

Errata wrote: »

It's not his fault the place has storage heaters, don't make him pay the penalty for your heating decisions.
.

We bought the flat with the storage heaters, we didn't put them in. My husband fully intends to put central heating at some point in his 'investment', as you put it, but for the moment it it is storage heaters and gas fire which probably costs more than central heating to run. Which is why I feel I should help him out. Which takes us right back to the beginning of the discussion.

Errata

His book bill WILL be ferocious, he's doing a good science degree not something like meeja studies !
How about investing in his future through contributing to his book bill ? I spent a fortune on books, but could have spent three times more if I'd bought all the books I would have liked to and which would have made a great deal of difference to my work.

Errata

Steph998 wrote: »

We bought the flat with the storage heaters, we didn't put them in. My husband fully intends to put central heating at some point in his 'investment', as you put it, but for the moment it it is storage heaters and gas fire which probably costs more than central heating to run. Which is why I feel I should help him out. Which takes us right back to the beginning of the discussion.

Yes, you should help him out. The guy's being penalised in so many ways because of your husband's wealth I'm starting to feel sorry for him.