I recently wrote down my thoughts on buying an apartment for our children to live in while they are in university in order to save over $288,000 in rent payments. What I did not mention is that our oldest child has almost finished his first year. I thought I would take some time to share the actual costs of sending your child to university these days since a lot of the information I’ve seen is wildly inaccurate.
A couple of things to note: He is in the arts program and is interested in becoming a psychologist. He also wanted to meet others in his first year and opted to stay on campus which we highly recommend especially after the isolating past few years. He has a large group of friends who help each other out which would not have been possible if he was alone in an apartment out there (and less expensive too). We also needed to sign him up for a meal plan. By the way: he and all his friends needed to buy extra food plans as they ran out of food credits.
The Financials:
| Item | Cost |
| Spending Money | $4,000 |
| Tuition | $5,616.90 |
| Food | $5,579.72 |
| Other School Expenses (Books, Fees, Etc) | $1,449.38 |
| Housing | $7,719.00 |
| Total | $24,365 |
To date, we’ve withdrawn $20,365 from his RESP to pay the bills and we’ve given him around $4000 for other expenses throughout the year.
Life Mission 