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.

@Frenchmartini02 ig your combined parents earn more than 60k you aren’t allowed a cost of living loan anymore. You get 5k and the parents have to do the rest.

Look at degree apprenticeships?

That’s unnecessary !

So helpful thank you! I think we are in the “fraction” category then…but are by no means well off. I will not panic then but start to resign myself to a lifetime of expense….or maybe I will persuade them to go to a local university and live at home 😂

How can accommodation be 8k per year? Our 3 bedroom house is less than that. There must be cheaper options. House share instead of halls? I suggest they each take a gap year and save up themselves
Student accommodation is ridiculously expensive everywhere. My daughter is in a shared house in Newcastle and hers is just short of £5,500. Other cities are far more expensive - my friend’s child is in York and they pay £8,000 for a fairly basic house share. And minimum loan which both kids get doesn’t go anywhere near covering it.

Bristol Native here! Congratulations to your girls!
Few Q’s -
Do either of your girls drive and/or will be taking a car?
How much do they like to party/looking forward to student nights out etc?
Do they know what campus location their courses will be at?
Apologies if this has already been asked as I’ve whizzed through a few pages and couldn’t see! Just thinking I may be able to offer some other areas to look for accommodation based on your answers.

I also went to uni in Bristol, but I lived way out past filton because it's all I could afford. I walked or cycled in (on my £20 bike) every day.

A quick Rightmove search suggests it's possible to find a room about that far out for £450-500pcm. Not great but doable.

Ds is working in a minimum wage job full time this year after 6th form and will save around 14K from that along with 12K CTF so should have a good amount of savings, he has also learnt to drive and paid for lessons and the test.

I noticed quite a few friends are also doing this to save, might be an idea?

Yes, Harbourside is fine if a little busy. I think the moorage cost is going up, though. One of our friends, who was also a lecturer at the University, used to live in one right next to the Thekla nightclub which is also a large barge!

Hello to the rest of the Bristol cats! 😃

DD, y3, is in Brighton and her rent, including bills is £8,400. Her loan is around £6k. She has worked all the way through and we have helped a little but haven’t been able to do so much.
DS, also y3 having had to redo Covid-carnage year 1 in a practical subject where he had no access to the kit due to lockdowns (but charged full fees and having to pay rent - both a scandal in itself) pays £6,200 rent including bills. He’s in a uni not far from London. He has worked all the way through but recently has stopped as it’s too much to do with his final project due in May. Again, we’ve given a bit but haven’t been able to afford much. I wish we had known more about this but even then wouldn’t have been able to save much. I think OP what youve saved is brilliant and I think will go a long way to help.

I have one in Bristol and another starting elsewhere (thank goodness, slightly cheaper), but I'm in a similar situation to you. I'm a single parent, I have to top up both of mine from the minimum maintenance loan. My son in Bristol pays around £8500/year for rent and then I have to pay bills and £400/month for him to eat/go to the gym/travel. He also tutors GCSE/A level students and picks up work during the holidays to subsidize himself. Sorry I can't give you any better news than that. Its crippling.

Just because a few people and posts have overlapped and it might help anyone that’s reading all OP posts

I’m not going to ask them to change their plans - I didn’t do my research and I’ll have to suck it up.

I’ll show them alternatives and if there is a saving I’ll find a way to incentivise it so it’s attractive (future LISA payments) but they’ve known stuff about faulty fuselages and the tension of magnesium alloys since they were in year 8/9 - I certainly don’t. If they know what is best then I’ll fall into line accordingly.

We earn roughly 67k as a couple . This means they won’t be allowed to get more than 5k each to live on per year as a loan. We are responsible for the rest. I would like them to be able to borrow more, not less. I hadn’t realised our income affected their loan. Rent is 8k. This means 3k per year before they get a single baked bean to eat.

Means testing is done as though there is only one child. A reasonable amount is decided and then a second child comes along and the ‘means’ doesn’t become means minus cost for first child - it’s just done as though child 1 doesn’t exist.

hope that covers a lot of what’s been queried - bit of a stream of consciousness to try ad limit any duplication.

Thanks to everyone that’s been so kind - do much to take in. 🙂

We're about 4 years off this nightmare, but currently, other than pension and emergency money, can't save anything. No cars on finance; no loans.... just a big mortgsge on a money pit of a house.

Couldn't save anything as kids were growing up, because we were paying nursery fees. I'd always assumed they'd just have to borrow. It's only recently that I found out that the amount you can also borrow is down to parental income.
It seems bonkers that I was able to go to uni, with my parents earning less than I do, while I'm wondering where we'll find the money. My kids will have to go local.

Hi @TheMoth Yup - me too - I thought they’d borrow what they needed to and I could ‘help out’. I had no idea. I missed a memo somewhere.

I have a particular slant on this, but I wouldn't compromise on the choice of university or course. Yes it is an expensive stage of life but it is important that they get to fulfil their potential at this formative stage of their lives.

The background to this is that I had a slightly unusual set of circumstances which meant that I didn't get a free choice of where I went to university, despite being a student with top grades at A Level. The place I went to was fine and the people who had chosen it loved it, but I never really wanted to be there. I also lived on a tiny amount of money and barely spent anything on food. My menu was oats, water and a cup of tea for breakfast; a cheese sandwich (no butter) and apples for lunch; minced beef ('fried' in water), tinned tomatoes and pasta for supper, which I would make last for a couple of days! (Now that's a diet to try again - I was a size 8 at 5'8!) I wasn't eating this way the entire week - for two days I would visit my boyfriend and he was living in a more comfortable fashion - but I lived on a shoestring for most of the week.

If I had my time over again what would I do differently?

I would have been a lot less afraid of debt, such as student overdrafts and even credit-card debt, especially once I got into my final year. You can pay it off rapidly once you start working.

I would have been far more honest with my parents about what I really needed to live on. There were issues around money, but I am not sure they would have wanted me to live in such a meagre way.

I would have been much more forward about applying for welfare funds or grants from other sources - for some bizarre reason I didn't feel myself to be 'deserving' of support and that it needed to go to others who were far more needy than I was. What actually happened is that it went to those who had applied, some of whom weren't particularly needy at all!

I completed my course, graduated and it's all in the past, but I do regret that I didn't have the foresight to see that this was a temporary phase and to have a bit more trust in the future. I made myself miserable over sums of money that I was able to spend freely a few years after graduation.

honestly, they’ll be fine. They both need to get jobs, and should think about going to Bristol earlier in the summer to secure one. Or two?

I wasn’t eligible for a student loan at all (foreign student), and I managed - my parents gave me a few hundred quid a month to cover some of my rent, then I worked 2 jobs - a retail job in my lecture free afternoons and weekends, and a pub job in the evenings.

Also, if they can’t already, they need to learn to cook! It’s so much cheaper than living off ready meals and processed crap.

Hi @AnonyLonnymouse - I hear what you’re saying. My main issues is that they means test both kids as though the other one doesn’t exist. I’d never want anyone to worry about butter on their bread! But you are right - I’ll teach them to leverage anything, but thats only because of an accident of high intelligence - they can almost guarantee being well off in later life. My degree was in Totalitarian 20th century history - utterly useless (…unless…)

But even if you get the full loan it isn't enough for accomodation and living expenses at many universities...

Well it is what is expected from the government unless the parents are low earners.

I paid my son's rent, my ex paid my daughter's rent because they both went to uni at the same time. I gave him bill money too. He did a masters so another years rent. It's mental. And I genuinely don't think you get your money's worth. Student accommodation is a bit grotty and costs a fortune given the general grot.

I'm not surprised and saddened. Many moons ago when I did my degree working class families kids just didn't go away for uni as they couldn't afford the accommodation. Most headed to local uni and commuted from home.

Shared house. They share together? Hope it works out. They sound amazing. And can look after you when earning a lot.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-decoded/#youtube-player-mO_rAsMuAlM

Watch this video @penjil because you are not well informed. Click on the bit that says "The hidden parental contribution" under the key part of the video section.

I cycled through three years in Bristol! Not the easiest, especially as I came from the flatlands, but almost everyone I knew rode a bike to get in to lectures.

@penjil not sure what planet you are living on.

Check out Martin Lewis or look at how much of a Maintenance Loan students with high to middling earning parents are actually entitled based on the parents household income. The minimum Maintenance Loan barely covers accommodation in halls in year 1 let alone food, books, course materials etc.