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.

Will your DD's be getting that government trust fund money? If so they can contribute that. Bristol is expensive my DD lives there. They can easily get part time jobs as lots available in big city. They need to try to live as close to Uni as possible so less money is spent on travel. Save as much as you can this year and tell them they both have to get summer jobs to save up for Uni. I don't envy you.

My Dd is also only entitled to minimum loan. We pay her rent , about £650 pcm. DD works during the holidays and has plenty to live off. Many of her friends are in the same situation.

First year wasn’t too bad as the rent was for 40 weeks. Second and third year it’s for 52 which is really frustrating as she isn’t there for many of the weeks.

Yep, some of the savings I made were in a CTF. We’ll get there - Just wish I’d paid more attention and done more earlier. Not ideal timing with just coming off a fixed rate either. Might have to get a second job myself. 🤷‍♀️

Schools really should be pushing the message to start saving to parents at the beginning of year 10. They know how much the costs will be. It's very late towards the end of year 13 to be bringing it up for the first time. I used to tell my students parents at first Parents Evening in Year 10. At least they had the choice then to save or not.

I have some questions if someone wouldn’t mind answering. ( I went to uni in the 90’s so I’m out of touch!)

I have a child in Year 7 who seems to be thinking that they’ll go as the career they want needs a degree (obv there’s lots of time for that to change but seen a comment about wishing they knew from year 7). I also have an older child but unless something drastic changes I can’t see uni being a choice.

We don’t have a lot of spare money so want to be on the ball, just in case.

so they get a loan which probably won’t cover rent. So parents or student are expected to top up the loan (few thousand a year?) Then there’s living expenses that need to be found. Travel, food etc? Can I ask how much people tend to contribute. I know it will vary between income and places of study but I’m interested to know.

Thanks if anyone can help.

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

My son (well I do) pays £9K a year in a house share in York! Student lets are very expensive! You also assume they can get an appropriate job during a gap year.

In terms of what is costs us, we pay his rent. He has some savings and has taken out £3k a year for maintenance. If he wants anything else he works in the summer. He now wants to do a Masters and there is enough in the savings kitty for his living costs but we'll have to find another year's rent (and will probably pay the fees too as it's one year - he took the loan for his undergraduate degree).

Another edit - when I was at university we only paid half rent in the summer holidays but now you have to pay full rent for the whole year in a lot of cases.

Definitely look into degree apprenticeships with BAE in Bristol,I know people who have taken this route.

Oh my goodness, THIS. 100 extra quid a month since they started secondary would have avoided this and we could have fairly easily found it. The media go on and on about the debt
and I was only half listening.

Hmmm OP, if I had two there at the same time for four years I’d really consider using your nest egg as a deposit on a buy to let for them. Some places will allow a family rental (nationwide/mortgage works will for example). Then your £1200 a month will be invested.
look at Filton, Horfield, easy to rent to UWE students and now UOB students looking for cheaper rents.

Reading this post is making me a little terrified!!
My eldest recently - very unexpectantly - started looking at Uni and applying for a particular course. She's never been academic so there was never any hint of her going into further education. Turns out she's found a skill for a creative subject and has applied for a degree course in that.
All come as a total surprise and as unplanned no big pot of savings for us. We're on reasonable salaries but with CoL we're having to tighten our belts already. How on earth are parents expected to come up with the money for funding an extra place to live??!! Those that are doing it - where are you getting the extra £6-800 per month from?? I just dont have it - and as we are reasonable earners daughter will only be eligible for middle loan - and she's already panicking about it taking the rest of her life to pay it back.

We're now looking at a Uni close to home so she can still live at home. For us it's seeming this might be our best option. It does now seem university is again the reserve for those that can either afford it - or for those on such low incomes that they qualify for all the grants and max loans. Anyone in the middle its increasingly less of an option.

I received the minimum and my parents could not afford to help me. Just because someone's parents cannot afford to help them, doesn't mean the child is given the maximum maintenance loan, not everyone's outgoings are the same.

They'll just have to get a job OP, like many many other students!

@Icecoldtulip , a good thing to plan is that their maintenance loan will cover living costs, so look up monthly rent and budget for that.
we actually extended the term on our mortgage to lower our monthly payments on that and free up about £300 a month. We probably save the other £300 on our food bill!
we will extend the term on the mortgage again when DC leaves uni.

The Op has said she has about £20k nest egg..... What kind of buy to let do you think she's likely to be able to afford??

Buy to let mortgages typically request 25% deposits or more - so are you aware of any properties in Horfield Filton that would be £80k??

This is basically my plan at the moment - if we extend the mortgage we will hopefully manage.

@OlderandwiserMaybe no of course she would need more 🙄. It’s just a thought about investing that money rather than losing it.

Oh ok. So she used her loan to cover her living expenses and you pay her rent?

mine is only year 7 so no idea where she would want to go yet but sounds like a good plan when it comes to working out how much they’ll need each month.

in the meantime I’m thinking of setting up a savings account and then it’s there if she goes to uni and if not it’s there for something else.

For the course they want to do Bristol is the place to be as there are large employers in the sector. I would definitely get searching for any kinds of grants or sponsorship as these fields are always trying to be attract more women.

@Icecoldtulip yes exactly that 😊

Would they be eligible for any of these

www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/scholarships-women-stem-subjects/

search-study-uk.britishcouncil.org/course/search-results.html?keyword=Engineering&onlineFlag=Y&OnCampusNowFlag=Y&OnCampusLaterFlag=Y

Deferring and taking a gap year during which they work and save makes a huge difference to students. Both my two older children have done this and we are managing with a combination of modest parental contributions, their savings, ongoing part-time work, some student loan etc. Another two children to go so it is going to be several more years!

It is also cheaper not having them home full time, which makes a monthly parental contribution more affordable. Your daughters sound great, but needs to understand the financial side of going to university too. Deferring for a year will help them out in the long term.

Another one coming in to say with two girls pursuing that type of degree is get them trawling for every possible grant/scholarships possible. And cold call too - any companies they are already connected to and would love to work with after graduating, ask if they have any support like paid internships or sponsorships they could apply for - worst that happens is they’ll say no, but the girls will already have made some connections and showed they are career minded and have initiative.

can they take a gap year and get a shared room at uni? Dot they get on? Shared rooms are much cheaper. Wouldn't solve years 2 and 3 though! Also, my dd did engineering at a top uni and found the course workload very heavy so it won't necessarily be a walk in the park for them to get a
part time job alongside their studies

I’m certainly going to look into it - they’re both predicted 4A* - both got 9 9s at GCSE, so I reckon someone would appreciate them. They’ve been obsessed with this stuff forever - nothing to do with me. I had to be dragged around Farnborough every other year - the red arrows were fine I guess but I fail to see the fascination of landing gear and whatnot in the trade show sheds. Baffling weirdos, my girls 🤷‍♀️

Yes but then the student can get full maintenance loan

Except they can’t. The cut off is just above minimum wage with no other income for a single parent. Two parents on minimum wage would give a student loan about £3k short of the full loan. That’s assuming no extra income or overtime etc. A single parent on an average uk salary would be short by £1500 and the child of a couple on average salaries would only get the minimum.

OP, you will be fine, you have a healthy income, a decent nest egg and some time. You will save during term time with not having to feed them and your utilities will be lower. You will be able to save out of income for the shortfall. You have enough to give the eldest £6.5k next year, and then the same to both of them the year after, which takes you to September 26. They have chosen an expensive city so unless they are very naive they will be aware that they will have to work to support themselves too. One of mine has chosen a London university and took a year out to save. We have agreed with all of them to top up to max loan and no more and it’s up to them if they want to go somewhere cheap and live decently and even be able to save, or go expensive and have to earn to eat rather than just to drink. I work a second job to be able to support this but my first job obliterates the maintenance loan anyway. If their current jobs are for chains they can ask about transfers. One of mine works in retail and her company were very helpful, another works in McDonald’s, which are franchises, so while she couldn’t get a transfer as such, she did walk into a job in a McDonald’s in her uni town and still gets shifts at the original one in holidays (they pay based in age though, whereas other businesses pay the under 25s the same rate as the overs). You don’t have to work very many hours to get £3-400 a month which covers basic living costs after rent.

The alternative is a degree apprenticeship or a military route but presumable they‘ve already ruled those out.

DS is at university, he gets minimum loan, we haven’t had to top up anything this year as he saved his part-time wages over the last couple of years to help fund this year. He is in a cheaper city than Bristol.

If your DDs want to go somewhere expensive then they may have to help finance it.

I am sure we will need to help DS over the next few years but he is also expected to work in holidays to supplement his living costs