True cost of living- how do others manage?

Happy_Kitties

My daughter rejected one uni-a really lovely uni, lovely course and lovely area bec the cost of living was so much higher. The cost of halls and what u got for ur money was just stupid.
The uni she has chosen, she looked at it as a whole and she could do so much more with her money, and get better value for money at the uni she has chosen. Still a nice place and nice course, it was just a case of looking at the practicalities, and let her compare and decide, as I am keen for her to take responsibility while at uni.

I second the poster who said about the student who has lots of time-they do......believe me.
My niece is in her second year studying biomedical science and only has a few lectures- she holds down a full time job plus her hobby aswell.
That is one of the things we looked at with my daughter.....how much contact time you have, and despite a lot, she will have time to do her sports and work for the uni.
I do think the OP needs to show their children their budget and make cutbacks such as with presents. Students or not, they are adults now.

MrsLWW

Have you sat down with the older kids and explained the situation, making them aware of it might help them to realise how much you're sacrificing for them and you might be surprised at what they'd be willing to do to help.

I agree with others who say taking them off one or both of the car insurance policies, also check if you would be cheaper going with admiral multi-car as you have 2 cars, my DH and I have been with them now for 5 years running, and inspite of us doing a price comparison every time it come to renewal time, we still haven't found anything cheaper.

Regards your gas and electricity, are you on the cheapest of the big 6 or are you on the CHEAPEST? We decided to take a chance on a company called Spark energy (who did have a bad reputation years back but have really pulled up their bootstraps and I can honestly say have been better than any supplier we have ever been with). Spark energy ask you to pay up a month in advance, they buy in the energy at a wholesale price and pass the savings on - we saved a fortune and when I logged in in late January and finally gave my meter readings I was astonished to see we were nearly £700 in credit midway through winter! (I know some people will baulk at having so much in credit for a variety of reasons but I like to leave it in in case of emergency. When it his £1000 I'll take out £500).

£140 seems an awful lot for car maintenance. We use our local garage (who are a great garage - always do research and get recommendations) a service is £150 per car) and I'd estimate that we probably spend about £300-400 a year between the 2 12 year old cars we have on repairs (trying to live off my parents motto, so no credit, not even for cars, we'll buy something newish when we can afford to save up and buy it outright).

Could you consider forgoing a holiday for a year? That would be £1800, plus spending money, that you could put towards one of the credit cards?

Shopping. I do a large percentage of my shopping at farmfoods - their cook from frozen meat range is pretty amazing (avoid their frozen mince though - yuck). Also if you sign up for their news letter they send you out vouchers which you can print off (£2.50 off a £25 spend, £5 off £50 etc.).

I like to get things like mince from the reduced aisle in tesco/Asda, and make big pots of chilli and bolognaise made from scratch and using lots of veg and smart priced ingredients which I bag into portions and freeze (saves money and also great to come home from a shift and bung stuff in the microwave from frozen and have a home cooked meal in 15). I also bulk buy in things like rice (big tesco value bags do excellent - make the rice (I do mine in the microwave) and portion it in bags and freeze it - then it's 4 mins in the microwave from frozen). Will happily post the recipes if anyone wants.

Make sure you your credit cards are on 0%.

Use excel to make a financial projection. I put the total amounts of each debt (except my mortgage) at the top, each month down the side, and deducted each month payment to see when we would clear each debt off, each time I cleared one debt I took the amount I was paying to it and added it into the next smallest debt payments to see how much quicker we could shift it.
So if I were you I were you I'd tackle the £3200 credit card by:

1. Chopping the card up
2. Adding the extra £104 (extra you noted to pay rent) and £150 (if you can sacrifice the holiday for a year)

Credit card - £3200 -£286 monthly
April. £2914
May. £2628
June. £2342
July. £2056
August. £1770
September. £1484
October. £1198
November. £912
December. £626
January. £340
February. £54

You'd pay off your credit card in 11 months as opposed to 100 months, you would then have £341 a month to turn towards your £5500 credit card which by then would be at £4895 and would be paid off in 14 month as opposed to 89 months, and so on and so forth.

HTH

thriftychick

I think £750 for two children at Uni is good going! We pay £500 per month for one child which is just her accommodation and bills. She lives off a very low maintenance loan and works during the summer to subsidise her loan. She manages her money very carefully, lives frugally and doesn't use her overdraft. Students do not get enough money to pay for themselves, parental contribution is expected by the Government now.

Poppy3008

MrsLWW wrote: »

Have you sat down with the older kids and explained the situation, making them aware of it might help them to realise how much you're sacrificing for them and you might be surprised at what they'd be willing to do to help.

I agree with others who say taking them off one or both of the car insurance policies, also check if you would be cheaper going with admiral multi-car as you have 2 cars, my DH and I have been with them now for 5 years running, and inspite of us doing a price comparison every time it come to renewal time, we still haven't found anything cheaper.

Regards your gas and electricity, are you on the cheapest of the big 6 or are you on the CHEAPEST? We decided to take a chance on a company called Spark energy (who did have a bad reputation years back but have really pulled up their bootstraps and I can honestly say have been better than any supplier we have ever been with). Spark energy ask you to pay up a month in advance, they buy in the energy at a wholesale price and pass the savings on - we saved a fortune and when I logged in in late January and finally gave my meter readings I was astonished to see we were nearly £700 in credit midway through winter! (I know some people will baulk at having so much in credit for a variety of reasons but I like to leave it in in case of emergency. When it his £1000 I'll take out £500).

£140 seems an awful lot for car maintenance. We use our local garage (who are a great garage - always do research and get recommendations) a service is £150 per car) and I'd estimate that we probably spend about £300-400 a year between the 2 12 year old cars we have on repairs (trying to live off my parents motto, so no credit, not even for cars, we'll buy something newish when we can afford to save up and buy it outright).

Could you consider forgoing a holiday for a year? That would be £1800, plus spending money, that you could put towards one of the credit cards?

Shopping. I do a large percentage of my shopping at farmfoods - their cook from frozen meat range is pretty amazing (avoid their frozen mince though - yuck). Also if you sign up for their news letter they send you out vouchers which you can print off (£2.50 off a £25 spend, £5 off £50 etc.).

I like to get things like mince from the reduced aisle in tesco/Asda, and make big pots of chilli and bolognaise made from scratch and using lots of veg and smart priced ingredients which I bag into portions and freeze (saves money and also great to come home from a shift and bung stuff in the microwave from frozen and have a home cooked meal in 15). I also bulk buy in things like rice (big tesco value bags do excellent - make the rice (I do mine in the microwave) and portion it in bags and freeze it - then it's 4 mins in the microwave from frozen). Will happily post the recipes if anyone wants.

Make sure you your credit cards are on 0%.

Use excel to make a financial projection. I put the total amounts of each debt (except my mortgage) at the top, each month down the side, and deducted each month payment to see when we would clear each debt off, each time I cleared one debt I took the amount I was paying to it and added it into the next smallest debt payments to see how much quicker we could shift it.
So if I were you I were you I'd tackle the £3200 credit card by:

1. Chopping the card up
2. Adding the extra £104 (extra you noted to pay rent) and £150 (if you can sacrifice the holiday for a year)

Credit card - £3200 -£286 monthly
April. £2914
May. £2628
June. £2342
July. £2056
August. £1770
September. £1484
October. £1198
November. £912
December. £626
January. £340
February. £54

You'd pay off your credit card in 11 months as opposed to 100 months, you would then have £341 a month to turn towards your £5500 credit card which by then would be at £4895 and would be paid off in 14 month as opposed to 89 months, and so on and so forth.

HTH

Please post recipe for rice!!

MrsLWW

Approx 150g rice (I use tesco value basmati) into a large bowl (when I say large I mean a 3-4lite bowl - i have the blue ikea ones)

Pour in a full kettle of freshly boiled water (way more water than the rice needs)
Stir
Pop in the microwave for 6 minutes
leave to stand for 4 minutes
Drain into a large collander/seive (I have a large rectangular shaped seive that sits over my sink (£4.95 from home bargains)
Pour one more full kettle of freshly boiled kettle over your rice to rinse the starch
Fluff and serve - voila

Use the left over rice to freeze:
wait till cold
use a mug (nice portion size)
line it with cheap freezer bags
fill with rice
gently squeeze the rice down
twist the bag and knot it (try and get as much air out as possible to avoid freezer burn
pop in the freezer

when you want to use take it out of the freezer, pop it into the microway on full power for 4 minutes (in the bag), cut the bag open, fluff rice to make sure it's piping hot throughout and serve.

yvonne_alan_joshua

Just read your thread, we also help our Son at uni after his goverment grant covering his rent he would have a £1.00 to live on so we transfer him £30.00 a week and pay his mobile he also works fifteen hours a week to top up his income. I do believe in helping but our children we want them to have a good education but they need to realise live is tough and they need to contribute

On_a_Shoestring

I haven't read the whole thread but I really wanted to say holy poo on the £375 per child per month for uni :eek:

I can sympathise because I was in the same situation as them - I lived in an expensive university town with the minimum maintenance loan of around £3,600 pa, and my rent cost £5,000 pa. The way I got through it was to get a part time (15 hr per week) job! Depending what degree they do, their hours at uni are probably minimal - mine were about 20 hours per week for the 1st year and then dropped to around 6 hours per week for my final term. It's plenty of time to take on part time work as well as keeping up with studies. Chances are they probably have one free day or at least free afternoon in the week, so they can easily work 3 days a week on shift work. In my opinion, they're grown adults now and they need to learn to a) manage their time, b) manage their budget and c) learn the value of money the hard way, through blood sweat and tears!