Very Annoyed at my OH too

tesuhoha

I know she needs to become more independent but I know loads of people who are helping to fund their kids through uni because they dont want them to get into debt. She is doing this trip on the cheap. She got a very cheap flight and is staying in hostels. I think some of it was paid for on her student overdraft but we did give her some money for her birthday. When she comes back she intends to get a full time job to pay off her overdraft. We have already discussed this. it was just that she got the opportunity to go and did not want to miss it. I suppose it was rather reckless but it was her decision and she will have to face up to the debt. i have warned her on many occasions but like most young people, she does not like to be told how to live her life. Her one saving grace is that she refuses to get a credit card. So while she is like this, i hope she will not get into too many difficulties. She has a student loan but this is for her day to day living expenses and i dont think she uses all of it. She does not tell me any financial stuff so I am in the dark. As a family we are in debt and battling to get out of it. My son has started work with my OH training to be a plumber so hopefully he will be able to stand on his own feet financially in the near future. We have sat down and talked about financial matters but my hubby reasons that he earns good money and my daughter will be getting a job in 2 years and then we will be much better off but it seems a long way off to me and so I struggle to repay the debts while he is not too worried about them.

LookingAhead

Oh dear. I see your point tes.

I'd be really pee'd off too. I agree with lynz. Your DH isn't fully on board yet.

Edit: By the way, I hope your son is doing ok these days...? Improvement?

tesuhoha

Yes thanks LA. Hes working hard at the mo. Getting up at 6 and working till 5. I hope this makes him have a more realistic view of the world. I knoiw he is looking forward to earning some money.

LookingAhead

tesuhoha wrote:

Yes thanks LA. Hes working hard at the mo. Getting up at 6 and working till 5. I hope this makes him have a more realistic view of the world. I knoiw he is looking forward to earning some money.

I bet! Has he come out of his 'shell' a bit more now?

bluezone

tesuhoha wrote:

I know she needs to become more independent but I know loads of people who are helping to fund their kids through uni because they dont want them to get into debt. She is doing this trip on the cheap. She got a very cheap flight and is staying in hostels. I think some of it was paid for on her student overdraft but we did give her some money for her birthday. When she comes back she intends to get a full time job to pay off her overdraft.see point 1 We have already discussed this. it was just that she got the opportunity to go and did not want to miss it. I suppose it was rather reckless but it was her decision and she will have to face up to the debt. i have warned her on many occasions but like most young people, she does not like to be told how to live her life.seee point 2 Her one saving grace is that she refuses to get a credit card. So while she is like this, i hope she will not get into too many difficulties. She has a student loan but this is for her day to day living expenses and i dont think she uses all of it. She does not tell me any financial stuff so I am in the darksee point 3. As a family we are in debt and battling to get out of it. My son has started work with my OH training to be a plumber so hopefully he will be able to stand on his own feet financially in the near future. We have sat down and talked about financial matters but my hubby reasons that he earns good money and my daughter will be getting a job in 2 years and then we will be much better off but it seems a long way off to me and so I struggle to repay the debts while he is not too worried about them.

You seem to want ot give your children the good things in life whilst you remain in debt. I'm not meaning ot be nasty but I had my first job at 14 p/t of course and anything I wanted even trips away I saved and paid for myself. My dear girl she should already be standing on her own feet. I couldn't afford to go to full time uni as I had to pay my way so I waited till I could afford it and paid for a part time HND degree course that took 6 years to complete! In this time I was offered 'lifetime' trips but I didn't have the money to go. You are going to have to be firm with this, as you are in debt yourself as a family and here she is going off spending money a if there are no responsibilities.

As a start -
1)she needs to get a job during the holidays (which I know you have mentioned she is going to do)
2)you should from september only pay half her rent/lodging if you feel you have to pay something so she starts to learn just how much you have helped her so far
3)tell her she needs to get a evening job whilst at uni (this can be done, my eldest sis had 2 p/t jobs whilst at uni studying art and graphic design and found loads of time to study)

You have to remember that when your daughter finishes uni she isn't automatically going to have a job from the day she graduates so the more experience and savings she can get behind her now with 2 years to go is a bonus and will help her along.

You really need to be firm with all your family and get yourself out of debt instead of keeo bailing others out as it were.

Please dont be offended with my reply x

bluezone

tesuhoha wrote:

Yes thanks LA. Hes working hard at the mo. Getting up at 6 and working till 5. I hope this makes him have a more realistic view of the world. I knoiw he is looking forward to earning some money.

see - he seems to have got to grips with the idea

Imelda

Hi Tes,

I think what you need here is balance, no I do not think that you were wrong to sell the camera and I also don't think it was wrong of your husband to lend her the digital one (he should have checked with you though). What is wrong is your daughter breaking it and not expecting to at least help pay for a new one. Does she have travel insurance? Make her claim on it. There is no way that I would have got away with breaking something and not contributing to the replacement.
Regarding the cost of putting her through uni, I think you need some compromise. You need that money more than she does. If she is working through the summer tell her that she needs to raise the money for her fees, that'll be about £100 a week, achievable and would help you out a lot. Now I am not sure how much cash you are giving her to live on but my parents gave me enough for my basics: rent, bills and food. The rent they paid at the beginning of term and they gave me £30 a week for food and bills (will have gone up a bit it was 5 years ago) and then I used my loan and part time job wages to fund going out and clothes. For books I had to pay them myself and claim the money back (I had to show receipts as proof!) Birthdays and Christmas I got clothes that I needed. I think they were more than generous. As a result when I got a full time job I lived at home and gave them 33% of my wages as rent, I lived at home for 3 years so I think I have gone some way towards paaying them back. Will your daughter do that when she has graduated?

Floss

Can I just clarify the situation re Uni rent etc?

My son is paying £65 a week for a room in shared house in Leeds - 52 weeks a year. He pays this out of his student loan of approx £4.5k and the £1100 the Government gave him for having a single parent on lowish income. He also lives off this money, pays gas & elec & water, books, phone credit etc. I hardly see him as he doesn't have a lot to spare for coach or train tickets. Next year he wil have just over £5,900 to live on. Good job he doesn't drink or smoke!

For next year, 2006/7, an existing student whose parents income after allowances is more than £23,000 will be looking to the parents for a contribution because their loan will be reduced. This goes up on a sliding scale, and is shared if there is more than one student.

Give Tes some credit - she may HAVE to help her daughter out, never mind the desire we all have to support our kids & try to reduce their graduate debts.

And i think if she can't remember to look after a camera she was loaned, then she should only have a disposable!

Sven67

Humm, ok lots of chat about the pros and cons of covering a childs uni costs, whether it was wrong or not to sell the camera and whether your daughter should feel guilty for breaking the digital one and replace it. Frankly I’m not going to get too embroiled in all that but just cover one thing, which I think was how do you get to carry on selling stuff on Ebay?

The answer is a cheap digital camera, I say cheap because a bog standard one at about 3meg (mega-pixals) is fine. Actually it’s perfect as Ebay don’t allow you to upload hi-res pictures because the files are too big and these will still give you perfectly good quality pictures. Therefore an entry level 3meg camera is fine, I’ve seen really cheap ones selling in Tesco or you could even get one cheaply from Ebay itself. Personally I upgraded my digital camera a while back and gave my perfectly good canon 3meg camera to the mother-in-law.

Floss

What! And didn't offer it to us Ebay mad DFW's??? :shocked: :rotfl: