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.

Our daughter is at uni got a student loan and has a bar job, no cost to me at all but of course I throw a few quid her way but I don’t have to.

I think if parents earn over a certain amount your student can’t get the full maintenance loan so most end up contributing 4750? Each year? Very few of us don’t pay something now

As as been highlighted by many others this is only possible if you are a low income family.
(Or perhaps your dc is going to a very cheap area of the UK and you simply aren't providing the parent portion of the finances)

She’s in Oxford. Of course I help out but it’s extras she could just about cover it with her loan and her job.

My understanding is that costs at Oxbridge are very different to other universities?
Because at many other universities the loan won't even cover the rent as has be spoken of many times on this thread.

Mine are also going Sept 2024
& Sept 2025. NO money saved as we’ve been trying to live. I doubt many people have managed to save money for their kids uni time.

I fully expected them both to get jobs as uni is not full time hours no matter what degree you are doing. That’s life.

Everyone else has managed over the years and so will you OP

My son pays £650 for a room in a shared house in Southville, Bristol is super expensive, your looking at 2k a month for a 3 bed in a decent area. Bristol is a great inclusive diverse city.

It’s true people have managed over the years, unfortunately rents have escalated massively and loans have not kept up. It used to be possible to just about pay rent and live in the minimum loan, that’s not possible anywhere in the UK now.

as @siameselife says above, it’s only almost doable if you have a low income household (under £25) so your DC gets the maximum loan.

@pinkstripeycat My DS is not permitted to get a job in term time - and wouldn't have time to do one anyway. His terms are only 8 weeks, his contact hours are insane (STEM subject) and some of his supervisions are in the evenings....

Don't beat yourself up, OP. It's an absolute shock to most of us when the reality kicks in. Be proud of your girls. Sponsorship suggestion from someone is a really good idea. It's so good they know their own minds and have done so well so far

My two both chose medicine so a longer haul, plus qualifying as a junior doctor is just the beginning of more exams and pg training for which they pay, but hey-ho, I feel pleased that they're happy with their chosen pathways, despite the stress!

Not RTFT so someone may have mentioned previously but could they do their degrees through the RAF? Very talented can get bursaries or sponsorship for degrees or can do degree apprenticeships up to masters with the RAF

Parents don’t have to ‘stump’ anything up. Students can get finance to cover tuition fees, maintenance and accommodation loans plus additional loans. My DC all went to uni and took out these various loans. We helped by setting up accounts with large local supermarket. They ordered the food, and we paid. We also make sure they had money for clothes and other necessities. DC had jobs but still left uni with debts. They are laid back about these debts as they see them as a ‘tax’ and, as they have since got mortgages, these are not considered debts when getting on housing ladder. All of their friends have loans, some over £50k. I wouldn’t bankrupt yourself, start putting away money to help them with house deposits.

We currently have two at uni and will again next year. Between the two of them it costs us £1200 a month. Both get minimum loan. Both have jobs and work all year round (DS) and holidays (DD). DS is somewhere cheaper than DD which helps. If we couldn't contribute, their experience would be very different, and may have limited their uni choice or maybe meant they couldn't have gone. We keep a close eye on the finances and have accepted that for these couple of years there's no spare for holidays or decorating etc. We've been honest with them about the financials and they know they have to work if they want extras. With DS, he tops up his loan to cover rent, we give him money to live on and anything more than this is up to him. With DD we pay her rent and she lives on her loan, anything left she will give us back. Again, beyond this we expect her to fund. DS didn't have an en-suite which brought halls costs down by a couple of grand, but DD has a health condition which means she benefited from the en-suite so her halls cost more. It's a good life lesson for them and I hope will give them a good idea of budgeting and needing to go without certain things or need to earn to pay for extras if you want them. Just hoping that DD is finished before the youngest goes and we have another two to support!

Students can get finance to cover tuition fees, maintenance and accommodation loans plus additional loans.

the point of the thread is that the minimum maintenance loan won't even cover rent at a lot of unis let alone any other expenses. (Minimum maintenance loan = 4700 ish v rent £6k + at loads of unis) What other loans are students able to access?

I wish I had looked into the cost of Uni, I just assumed the loan would cover it all, how naive I was!
Our DS is just finishing his 4 year master’s degree, he could claim ( roughly) £6000 a year based on our household income, (approx £40,000) that did not cover the rent/food/ fun times
My DH had an old “classic” car, he had it for years, so he sold that and paid off the mortgage ( had a mortgage since 1989)
he gave our DS the mortgage amount each month, he also paid any difference in the bills that the loan didn’t cover.
He increased the money to £600 an month for the last 2 years as £400 wasn’t enough
Our DS couldn’t get a job as the Uni course is too intense, constant papers to complete,
I remember going to a meeting at his 6th form , frantically writing in my notebook about money needed, panicking and feeling sick , so the idea of telling parents in Year 7 is a good one
i remember a snobby, extremely entitled work colleague telling me -“that’s why parents save for their kids uni funds once they’re born!”
I said we’ve been using all our money to keep them alive !
Good luck to your family 🍀

The loan for tuition is available for everyone. The amount of the loan for maintenance is based on parents salary and unless the parents are on a low salary it will be no where near enough.

My sister got minimum help for my niece, my niece has been doing marine biology in Essex and has been working part time in a pub in the evenings, as well as dj'ing at all different nightclubs every weekend to support herself!

I spoke to a few colleagues about this today, all of their children got the minimum loan and none of them pay their children’s rent - they all work to earn the extra. Most parents said they sent £50-£100 a month to their children but that they didn’t pay their rent/living costs entirely. They did all say that their children were in the minority with this.

OP have you checked the amount of taught time your DC will have? I think I only had about 9 hours lectures a week when I was at uni so plenty of time for a job - courses vary though.

Yeh @Iamgettingolderandgrumpier the maintenance loan, as many in here have flagged, is based on parental income and once that is over a relatively low ceiling, a student can only get the minimum of about 4.5k. In most unis that will barely cover the cheapest accommodation, in some not even close.

What are these other loans you speak of? Did your dc get the max loan - and crucially, was this a few years ago? Things have changed massively with CoL and rising rents but the loan barely going up.

Ds shops for food at Aldi and has noticed his basic basket going up by £15-25 a week each year in the last two years. He shops carefully as well, no ready meals or crap.

Bristol is very expensive although perhaps that is because there has been a great shortage of accommodation in recent years. I think that the number of students will start to go down though. I think there are fewer first years in most universities this year than previous years and this will probably continue particularly as there are fewer international students applying. Hopefully this means that rents will start to come down and the 21k will go further.

If you haven't got any other children at home then your household bills will probably decrease a bit too so you will be able to give them money from your income too.

What do you think would be a sensible amount to save for each child to go to uni? (Teachers, so not hugely high earners). Like OP, I thought we were doing quite well aiming for similar amounts.

Yes, it was a few years ago. DC got £3k (£9k) ( one DC lucky to get £3k, rest not so lucky and had to pay £9k+) tuition loans, approx. £5k accommodation loan and a further £5k general loan. On top of that, they worked and we were in position to allow them to live rent free when they were home and help them out with food and clothes etc. Tbh because we just get on with it, you forget about CoL and increased rents etc and these will have had a huge impact upon current students. Really surprised that media haven’t picked up on this as it will be putting university out of reach of many young people.

Ah ok @Gettingolderandgrumpier60 well if we are talking 3k tuition fees that was a few years ago. So now there is a flat tuition fee loan which is the same for everyone, but then one loan for maintenance, accommodation and any other living costs; the max amount for this loan is a bit more than £10k but once you earn more than about £25k household income (which is not very much) that figure goes down until it his a minimum about £4.5k for household income above about £60k. £4.5k is just not enough obviously and as everyone says, will only pay the cheapest accomm in certain unis and leave nothing for food or transport or anything else - so parents do really need to stump up cash.

I very much agree it is starting to push university or at least university away from home out of the financial reach of many. The issue for me is that the sliding scale needs to move more - if your household income is £150k+ your contribution is supposed to be the same as a household earning £70k which seems a bit much tbh.

I currently have 2 children in uni, they do not get the full loan. We cant afford to help out much finacally, so therefore they both have jobs. As do all if their uni friends.

This really is awful. The days you could get a grant (I didn't get a full.one but it helped) and worked in holidays and some parental contribution to keep your head above water are long gone. Yes we can start trust funds at an early age but they will be gone quickly. Really not wjat we want, the realistic expectation now is to have debt but only to paid back when earning enough to afford. Just the way it is unfortunately unless very rich parents. Xx