Maintenance Payments Ending

@MascaraGirl Also true, of course. Assuming it's a decent uni that offers the course you want. Degree level apprenticeships are another good option - but extremely competitive.

You should sit down between you and figure out how / if you support your children through uni - and dad can pay direct to his children

for non term time you can ask fir a contribution for food etc from
your ex if your children will live with you those terms - but he can say no

Students also have the option to study at a uni close to where they live which saves on accommodation costs

@Stiffnewknee The situation is vastly different for English students. (Btw, I don't normally spout " bollocks". DD has recently had uni finance assessment and DH is a uni prof, so we are up to date on the situation)

They should ask him, not you.
You are no longer connected financially with him. They are, as adult children.

Yes they are and my DC were Welsh students but it can’t be that different for English students surely? There would quite rightly be uproar if they were worse off!

@Stiffnewknee Those are the figures for Welsh students. I should have clarified - Scottish students get free tuition, Welsh students get a combination of grants and loans. For English students, the situation is as I described.

It does depend somewhat on the course.

I've just had a look, if I'm not wrong SD's household income is a little less than ours, at £45kish, and the calculator tells me that would be £7500 a year in maintenance loans. I looked up Liverpool Uni halls and they start at £6,756 a year (£173 a week for term time only).

That leaves £744 which is obviously nothing like enough to live off. However, even if you have a very intense course, you can work over the summer. Even 4 weeks of full time work at NMW could save £2k, and students usually get around 12 weeks off so I don't think 4 is crazy, even if it takes them a while to find work. So that's £50 a week for every week of term.

If you can work even 4 hours a week PT, that's another £50, and I think £100pw should be enough to live off shouldn't it?

If parents can chuck in some money for a big supermarket shop a few times a year and cover train fares, I think that wouldn't be an uncomfortable life.

We will be giving SD monthly money when she goes to Uni but it won't be anything like the figures floated on here of £500+, we just don't have it.

Re dentistry and medicine, you do get a bursary for those.

@NanFlanders

@NanFlanders
A quick google proves this is bollocks.

I think a lot of people (including ourselves until recently) are unaware of the changes to student finance over the years since I got my fees paid and a full grant. If your household income is over £25K your offspring will NOT be entitled to a full maintenance loan. The expectation is that parents earning above that will contribute. They will be entitled to a tuition fees loan paid directly to the uni, which will leave them in considerable debt for most of their working lives. They will also be able to get a loan of around £5K which will not even cover halls of residence fees of around £200 per week. It's easy to say "get a part-time job', but these are in very short supply as there are so many students looking. Also, some unis (including Oxford and Cambridge) forbid you from working in term-time - you can be thrown out - and many courses, e.g. medicine, dentistry, engineering are so full on that it is not possible to work alongside and pass. A gap year could help you save some I guess, but a lot of unis are reluctant to take students on competitive courses like maths, as they think they will lose their edge in the year off. It is really, really important to save whatever you can to help. If you can't, you can't, of course.

@usernamealreadytaken
Well said! 👏

@bumblecoach
Embarrassing for me? I don’t think so! 😂
You sound completely unhinged. As for you comment about your DC buying you a house in the future! 🤦‍♀️😂 Now that IS embarrassing!
I’m predicting your future post in a few years
’I lived on baked beans to put my kids through uni and they still haven’t bought me a house!’

I think you have the right to give your kids every penny you have and live on beans on toast for a decade to fund a uni education if you want to.

What you don't have the right to do is expect anyone else to do the same.

My parents wouldn't have done this for me and I think they were a pretty long way away from being deadbeat parents.

So instead of spending your money on buying a house, you're eating beans on toast and expecting your kids to house you at some random time in the future? Poor things with that over their heads from the get-go. Not really a very good example to set, to show that mothers should go without to enable adult children to not have to support themselves.

Wow, your poor kids, knowing that you are holding the help you've given them at Uni over their heads and expect them to support you later.

I hate to think what would happen if they choose to change career paths, or become SAHPs, or take on other financial obligations that don't include buying their mother a house.

We might not be willing to ruin our younger daughter's life to support my SD as an adult but we certainly won't expect her to fund our lives after Uni!

Smug post of the week award

When are some going to learn that kids are not piggy banks.

My children have a brain. They don’t piss money up the wall because they know how hard I work for it. They additionally work very hard.
You’ve got no idea what degrees they have studied and what they’ll end up being but believe me they’ll be buying me a house in years to come. It’s what supportive families do for each other.
You could learn a lot

So whilst your kids are living it up Uni pissing YOUR money up the wall your sat at-home with your beans on toast 👏👏

Gosh, how embarrassing for you.

whatever it takes to launch my children successfully into the world our family will do, Sadly, the other parent doesn’t feel the same way so we as a unit to do have to overcompensate.

I feel really sorry for the other children who have to navigate step parents, 2nd families actively working against them at such a young age. Tragic

@bumblecoach
How utterly ridiculous and judgemental! I don’t believe any sane adult would do that. If you actually did then I hope you didn’t have other dependents who suffered because you were paying money you didn’t have for an adult who is perfectly capable of earning their own money? 🙄

@MrsSunshine2b
Honestly it isn’t. My DC managed fine. The finance is calculated based on the resident parent. I was working as a teacher so not on a terrible wage but my DC still got full finance. I think the resident parent’s income has to be over £50K before any deductions are made. My DC knew that I couldn’t afford to help them as a single parent paying a mortgage and bills on my own at the time and they did not expect this. Personally I think it made them value their learning and work hard to achieve good results. Both are now earning more than me only a few years later and have a very strong work ethic.

You only ever get one side of the story. Like most of the threads on here, you can only truly get balance if you hear the other side.

The other parent often appears to live in a kind of zombie state, where they have no additional costs associated with their (potential) new family and kids, no living costs, no housing costs and no retirement costs.

They do however earn multiple times the wages and are considered appalling by not sending every penny they have to support their adult kids at uni. The value of which by many people could often be considered extremely questionable in the first place (but that is probably a whole new argument).

I've noticed that, and also that every divorced father on MN is earning >£100k!

We will give SD what we can but if it's really necessary for her to have £100s a month just to survive at Uni, and her Mum doesn't have it either (no idea how much her Mum earns or her finances tbh, they go to Disneyland a lot so she can't be struggling) then she'll have to take a gap year and save some money up I suppose.

We live a modest lifestyle as it is.