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.

They are both super academic and have a lovely and supportive mum so I'm sure they will be all good in the long run.
I would just caution that while they can definitely work in the summer they may be very busy during term time.
My dsis studied engineering and wouldn't have had time for a term time job. I had an arts degree and did have time.

Jesus Christ I hope mine don't want to go to Uni! £8k rent a year?!?! That's my mortgage on our family home!!
I am absolutely screwed if mine want to go (one I suspect won't, one I suspect will)

These figures are mind boggling

Dsis did get grants, Carnegie scholarships etc.

Bunk beds

Thank you for that - it’s put it into perspective. I’ve only known that I wasn’t as well prepared as I thought I was for a couple of days, so the girls aren’t even aware there is an issue yet. By hook or by crook I’ll sort it myself if I can. They’ll have to work - they have Saturday jobs and are do stupidly fiercely competitive (in a lovely way) they even compete on savings, so they have something in the kitty. Once I get the courage to tell them its going to be a bit more bumpy than I’ve given them cause to believe I’m sure they’ll crack on with some of the funding stuff themselves.

I have 3 at uni currently so I feel your pain - I think we have less spending money than the DC at this point.

This is how we do it:
I had a nest egg saved which provides a buffer and I pay their rent out of this and my salary. Their choice of location means rents vary hugely, so this is the fairest way to treat them equally.

The DC have to live off their minimum loan plus anything they earn for their day to day expenses, fun and travel. They have got very good at budgeting and finding deals.

In your position I would be saving hard whilst waiting to see where they will actually be going. And also subtly encouraging them to look at alternatives where rents are lower. Loughborough, Leeds, Sheffield etc. But if they are set on Bristol, you will find a way to make it work.

Despite the cost can I just say how exciting and good for them pursuing their dream.....I understand their passion. I spent my childhood with my younger brother at airports watching planes. He is an aeronautical engineer at LHR now. He was sponsored with BA not sure if they do it now as it was 30 years ago. But worth asking. How do planes stay up in the sky!?

3! Dear lord! Surely once the means testing has come up with a ‘reasonablle’ figure for child 1, the means is now means minus the figure for child 1? You must be living on thin air!

As they will have left home can you use what you would have been spending on them at home as kind of a monthly allowance?

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

This is what we did for DS, we felt he would benefit more from learning to budget his own money while we had the fixed cost of the rent. He also worked full time in the holidays at McDonalds when we was back here meaning he didn't need to work while he was at Uni but the money really did help too up his loan!

He was studying in Liverpool and we paid about £6k each year for his accommodation. To the poster who asked how we afforded it, DH does a job that he can do as a day rate contractor so he did that for the duration and sucked up some crappy commutes for jobs that paid the dosh! Now DS has graduated DH has taken a perm job locally.

Where are you Princess? Bristol is one of the most expensive cities in the UK. On top of that, there is an absolutely dire shortage of rental property which pushes the prices up still further. The average rent for a basic bedroom in a shared house is around £800 pm not including bills and this is far from luxury accommodation. That's if you can find anything without having a nervous breakdown in the process.

I’ve got this in my spreadsheet. Nothing causes more rows in this house than my eldest and her enthusiasm for setting up camp in the shower. I also spend quite a lot on petrol moving them
around, so there will be savings. They get through a litre of their poncy over priced orange juice a day if I don’t watch like a hawk. 🙂

It's been a while since I was involved, but there are some groups set up to encourage female participation in STEM subjects- I wonder if they might have information on internships, scholarships, sponsorship etc? E.g. https://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/

Because Bristol is the most expensive city outside of London to live in.

it’s crazy.

We didn't bother to do the full loan application as there is only one year when all three are at uni and as you say it only makes a small difference in the loans.

And one would end up paying more back on their loan, so fairer to all have the same amount.

The earnings cut off is way too low.
From next month a 40 hour a week NMW job will pay nearly £24k.

@EssexCat I can assure you that Bristol is not the most expensive (outside London) in my experience!

I'm an engineer, and now a lecturer at an also very expensive city university - honestly, they'll be ok with a part time job. All I'd say is get them to be smart about the job they pick - I was a bookie (better hours, better pay and could study sneakily behind the till than if I was working in a bar or shop) and work ALL the hours they can in the holidays. Friends who did bar work preferred fancy hotel bars and naice restaurants - better tips. Somehow I didn't need sleep in my early twenties so I worked full time hours around classes and still partied and travelled and did all the things we do in our misspent youth!

Not sure if they still do it (as I was at u.w.e about 25yrs ago), but I was a warden in one of the sets of student accommodation gor my 2nd year - about 3 of us had a rota of being available at weekends etc to provide support for students if had a problem (emotional support really if homesick in first term), and had master keys in case of accidental lock out, and to be there in case of fire etc. I didn't have to actually do many of these things - think it was a case of having a responsible adult on site. And for doing this, I didn't have to pay rent for my room.

I don't think this was highly advertised, but might be worth an enquiry to student services in case this type of thing still exists?

Again we pay their rent and they have the minimum maintenance loan to live on. Plus working in holidays.

However for people saying oh they should just work, it's actually not that easy. If they want to come home in the holidays it's actually very difficult to get a retail/hospitality job. Despite many places apparently letting students transfer between stores in my experience from my kids friends this rarely happens. And if your course is 30 contact hours a week or medical or has placements again working in term time is very difficult. So they are limited to seasonal jobs in the holidays, which everyone wants.

So whilst yes all students are capable of working at some point during the year it's not actually always that easy to get jobs. They also ideally need a part time job through sixth form so that they actually have a CV and some experience before they get to uni.

There are plenty of scholarships. Ask Bristol themselves then also look at the major local employers, RAEng, IET/IMechE/IAeroE, and search online. Bristol looks to need to be emailed to find the full info.

@Topbird29 it does exist, and in fact DC1 is doing it next academic year. It's an option if you don't mind being in halls as an older student in with the freshers!!

I’m pretty confident it is for private rentals anyway. Which is what I meant to say but didn’t. So apologies.

And one summer I worked so stayed in Bristol and had made friends with someone who had to pay for her room in a house share over summer although she (and no one else) was going to be there. So we had an agreement and I used her room for the summer and looked after the house and gave her some compensation. So I managed to save up some wages.