Looking like both kids are going to Bristol at the same time - how screwed am I?

[CottonOn]

Posting here for traffic.
Two kids, 13 months apart, both want to do aeronautical engineering, one girl starting this autumn, the second the next.

They’ll get the minimum maintenance loan. I’ve got roughly 20k set aside which I naively thought would give them a fairly pleasant 3 years. I’ve only just clocked that actually this isn’t nearly enough.

This is what the calculator is telling me

You could get a £4,767 Maintenance Loan to contribute towards your living costs.
How your Maintenance Loan is calculated:
£10,227 (the maximum Maintenance Loan available)

• £5,460 (the amount you might not be eligible for, based on your answers)

= £4,767 (the amount you could be eligible for, based on your answers)

I’m going to have to stump up £10,920 in the years where they are both there simultaneously just to get to the basic £10,227 and it ooks like accommodation is going to eat up 8k, so even that won’t be enough.

Can anyone tell me how much it’s realistically going to cost to top them up enough to live in Bristol? I’ve been so blithely naive all these years thinking I’d squirrelled enough away. Could kick myself.

This was my thought, my sister shared a large bedroom at uni with a close friend. This was also used as the living room! They coped

Suggest degree level apprenticeship?

We've got three at Uni all at the same time. The only way we can get anywhere near affording it is that shortly after the last two started, we had paid of the mortgage - this was a bit of a fluke and in no way planned to work out that way because we hadn't really ever looked in to just how much it might cost, and even if we did, we wouldn't have had the money to save anyway. Mine all spend quite a lot of time not actually in the Uni though, so is there any way they could live further out, somewhere more affordable, and commute in when necessary?

My son is at Bristol Uni at the moment and currently in halls which I think are just under £7000
Next year he has a house share which is £6000 / pcm including bills. That’s £6600 for 11months. They don’t have to pay for the full 12 months luckily.

He starting looking in October and bagged the house by Christmas. It’s within walking distance to the Uni too.

It’s expensive in Bristol and a lot of Uni towns ( I have another at Uni in London too 😳) but with a bit of planning and by looking early it really doesn’t have to be in the £8k region

pinkyredrose £195 a week for 46 weeks, I've just checked.
DD does have a retail job, in Leeds so it's easier for her to commute from York or our home, no transferring in summer too. Though not practical for many students OP, could your DD's do that and actually transfer in summer?

When was that? It would be great if it could happen - one of mine wants to do an MA at the same Uni one of the others will be doing their final year and would happily share - but nowhere is rented by per room anymore, all by per person.

I was an engineer in nristol

i just got by with a job. My mum had nothing to give to me and I don’t know why but I didn’t get much help (though I’m old!!!)

Mine cycle everywhere.

I might be completely unrealistic here, but could you look at buying a property, get a buy to let mortgage and have your DDs live there, maybe rent out a room or 2 to cover the costs.

OP, twins here, we've been saving for quite a few years but like you have been shocked at the expense.

Neither in Bristol but this is an idea of where we are :

1st year halls this year were just over £18k for the two of them, they received minimum loan each (so just over £9k in total - obviously a deficit for us to pay of £9k just for halls). Neither chose the hall they were allocated, that is what they ended up. Both partially catered, one has a 3/4 bed room with a shared bathroom between the whole floor, the other one has a single bed, shares a bathroom with 1 other student. So neither has ensuite / fancy room - its just v expensive.

On top of the £9k for rent, we're funding living expenses only during term time, 31 weeks, (one can't work in term time due to the number of contact hours, the other could but actually despite applying for lots, hasn't got one yet - don't bank on them being able to walk into a job) which is costing another £4k (thats giving them each about £60 a week to top up food and for everything else). Anything over and above that, they pay for themselves (from summer jobs and they've both worked at home at Christmas too). We don't give them any money at all during the holidays. One has spent much more than the £60 per week (used their own savings), one has managed.

So we're in for about £13k this year (and thats not including the tech they needed / all the stuff they needed to take at the start).

Next year, the houses they've signed up for are about £7.5k each - they're much cheaper per week but we've found that you have to sign up for 52 weeks which racks up the cost. So the rent deficit will only be about £6k between them, rather than £9k (but they'll have all of their food to buy next year). We're working on the basis of topping them up to slightly more than the full loan which will be about £3k each so it will be a total of £12k for us to fund for Year 2.

Yr 3 is a placement year for Twin 1 so we'll only be paying for 1, but we'll be paying for 2 again the year after.

We also have a Number 3 but she's a few years behind and fortunately we started saving much earlier with her - only £100 a month but because we started earlier, we'll have saved about £20k for her before she starts so all the extra expense should be covered. Wish we'd have started so much earlier for the twins.

In terms of how you can bridge the gap - you can save whatever you can between now and when they go, and of course during the time that they're there. Have a conversation about expectations - we were clear that we wouldn't be bailing them out if they went overdrawn, it was their responsibility to budget / pay for extras out of their own money if it wasn't covered. It is tricky because there are students with varying levels of income - some will have less, some more, and thats another layer to manage.

has your DC checked out all the bursaries available? my DS gets a yearly bursary from the uni which is so helpful, and there are quite a few available.

You usually need 25% of the property value as a deposit for a buy to let mortgage. So to get a 4+ bedroom house in Bristol, realistically you'd need to have £100k lying around to spend buying a house!

Look on the “what I wish I knew about university” Facebook page. Bristol crops up quite often on there.

What really got my goat was the overlap of a few weeks between each years accommodation in July when they changed accommodation and contract dates differed. So for a few weeks of July in the first two years, we were paying two rents, and as lectures had finished at the end of April, dd was home already and not living in either of the bloody houses we were paying for! That was really galling.

You won't need to find £12k tho (or atm you wouldn't) - min loan is £4ishK then you are meant to top up to about £10k - so "only" (I know it's a lot) £6k. And I believe Cambridge and Oxford are actually cheaper as they encourage students to stay in halls and the halls are v good value - compared to the private rents in some places.

Please do encourage him to follow his path. And remember as I and others have said, costs for your household will come down when the DC are away most or much of the year. I really notice it in the food bill with sporty DS2 at uni. And when he comes home lol.

There are two savage hills both ways from those locations and no cycle lanes for most of it. Easily 40minutes each way. Cycling is big in Bristol but it’s not like Cambridge and more of a survival sport on some routes.

They’d be better living closer and spending that couple of hours commute time per day on a part time job to at least cover their food/phones etc.

They’ll manage.

My dc at Bristol hasn’t found a job so far but apparently has one lined up for next year.
Its not that easy finding work.

He cycles all over Bristol! but then he is used to London traffic too

What really got my goat was the overlap of a few weeks between each years accommodation in July when they changed accommodation and contract dates differed. So for a few weeks of July in the first two years, we were paying two rents, and as lectures had finished at the end of April, dd was home already and not living in either of the bloody houses we were paying for! That was really galling.

its so that the landlords only have to pay council tax on all there properties for 1 month of the year - many student contracts are for 11 months - leaving just one month of full council tax.

why is term time only 30 - 35 weeks each year and not 45/47 weeks for 2 years? it would be 2 years fees, two years rent and save a years fees and rent

Agree, we were topping DD up £500 a month in 2018 in Leeds because she not only got minimum loan but she couldn’t work because it was an NhS degree where they were on placement for 50% of the time….
in Hull.

Bristol is insane for rents.
Years ago I rented to Students at way below market rate(£25 a week) as thought it ethically wrong to charge so much
the £50 a week helped pay my mortgage ( I lived in the house)
It wasn’t ideal for the students to share with me and young DS but the low price made it worth it for them
One is a friend years later!

That £10k is a lower average for halls or similar from googling!! Plus we'd want to contribute towards basic living - food etc.

And we also have a 2 year gap - but second son is erring towards engineering which we can keep fingers crossed for an apprenticeship!

It's ridiculous. We will barely be able to help ours out at all if they go. They may just be limited to universities that are commutable.

We earn enough not to get the full loan, but not enough to have any savings for them - we don't live elaborate lives but at the moment there just isn't anything left at the end of the month.

Please don’t put your son off Cambridge. It’s a very wealthy university and there are lots of bursaries for students who don’t have parents with a high enough salary to support them. The rich colleges in particular have deep pockets.

You will not get a 4-5 bed house in a decent area within a reasonable distance of UoB with a 20k deposit! As I said earlier, these houses cost way over a million.

These are really rough areas and nowhere near the University!