You may well have youngsters who are about to head off to university, or perhaps you’re thinking that in a year or two’s time you’ll be the one with a child heading out into the world. It’s a stressful thing watching them going off and living perhaps for the first time away from home. Worrying if they’ll cope, how they’ll get on etc. Wondering whether you’ll need to bail them out with money can be a real worry particularly if you’re on a tight budget yourself.

Preparation is the key to most things, and preparing your child – or should I say young adult – for what to expect is no different in this. For a few, mum and dad can afford to pay for what they need while they’re away, but for most students, this will be their first real experience of budgeting money for themselves. If you have time, before they go, it’s worth helping them learn how to budget money for themselves – this doesn’t have to mean sitting them down to more lessons, it can simply be getting them to help you look at the monthly or weekly budget that you live on, and looking at what things cost in the supermarket.

Different universities and different living accommodation will have different facilities available, so before your youngster goes off, check out what’s available to them – if they’re going to be living in halls, will they have use of a shared microwave, iron and kettle and so on, or do they need to provide their own. Some residences provide meals as part of the living fee. If this is an option, is it one worth taking up? For some it will be, for others they may feel that they’d rather try cooking for themselves. Will they need to provide their own tv licence or is that provided by someone else? Making sure you look at all the options with them will help them when they get there as they’ll know what’s available, and it will help you as well to feel less worried about them.

One really excellent piece of advice that was given to a friend of mine some years ago is to put money on to a card or a number of cards that can be used in a specific supermarket. (For goodness sake make sure that the supermarket you choose is available where they’re going first though!). Money on a gift card for Asda or Tesco for example can be spent on food, clothing, or even a kettle and toaster if they find they need one. It’s great to buy them things to take, but if they’re not going to need them, you’ll have wasted your money and this way the money is there and can’t be spend in pubs and clubs, but can be used as I say on a variety of things they may need.

There are a few things I’d suggest you buy for them to take with them. A decent and simple cook book. Even if they can cook reasonably well, there’s nothing like having something like that to fall back on when they want it. There are a number of good ones out there these days, The Bumper Student Cookbook and Cheap as Chips, Better than Toast are two worth looking at, though of course you could write one for them yourself and print it out for them to take including in it all their favourite recipes that you cook yourself. The second item I’d suggest you get your young student set up with is a decent bank account that if necessary you can transfer money into to bail them out. If they have an account with the same bank as you this will be easier – even if they don’t use it for anything normally, having it there will make you feel safer as you will know you can get money to them quickly if you need to. There are various websites that give inventory style lists of what they might need, and it’s worth having a look through a few of them even if you think you’ve forgotten nothing as it’s very easy to over look the obvious. The Student Room Wiki is a good starting point for this. One last thing that they will need a number of in their first week or weeks at uni is passport photos. If you can, set a picture up for them on the computer and print a sheet of them. It’s always SO expensive getting pictures taken in photo booths and even though the campus may have cheaper facilities, printing an A4 sheet of them at home is going to be a fraction of the cost.

by Vialdana

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