I’d ask the aunt to break down where the money was spent;food, clothes?
The travel expenses have been significantly more than the COA figure, while the books & supplies have been less, probably because his major/s don’t require many textbooks, and the professors seem to be aware that many of the students struggle to pay for expensive new texts, and try to use more affordable options.
In general the off campus apartment rent they calculate into the COA is way off - unless a student is living in a dump with multiple people per bedroom. Some do live 20-25 students in a 5 bedroom house - rents are extremely overpriced.
Transportation costs really add up. If your child is going to fly home for every break (this is common for first year students who are far away), add this to your budget. Also ask about storage costs if they are storing their belongings at school over the summer.
Both my kids went way over COA estimates for housing when they moved off campus. Off campus housing in the stated price range was very scarce, and in undesirable locations.
We did our own spreadsheet to compare COA for 4 years at each school where DS applied. This revealed the places where each school had calculated COA differently and allowed us to put all on the same basis (#trips home, fees, health insurance, etc). We used a 5% increase for each year beyond prices shown for Freshman year. We are now adding an “actual” column for the school he selected and discovering that there are less expensive options than what we knew at the time of acceptance. For example, there are two less expensive dorm options for sophomore year. We are not tracking every penny spent (toiletries, haircuts, etc) but he is easily staying within the budget for those things. He is planning ways to stretch his budget for sophomore year now before he has to commit to housing to see if there is room for a club sport, on campus parking fee, car insurance, etc. If there is not room in the budget he will work more over the summer or not do those things (just like in REAL life). Things beyond the stated COA vary widely by student and IS somewhat within the student’s control.