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.

I feel for you OP it’s expensive. It’s also ironic that when people worry about nursery fees of £1000 a month which are arguably non negotiable they’re often told to only have kids they can afford and why should anyone help them but then when it’s £6-700 contribution a month to uni the consensus is it’s not fair and unrealistic on parents
Education and childcare in the UK is a shit show. Why they put fees up to £9k a year is beyond me it’s disgusting.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/map.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E782&minBedrooms=3&numberOfPropertiesPerPage=499&radius=0.5&propertyTypes=&includeLetAgreed=false&viewType=MAP&mustHave=&dontShow=&furnishTypes=&viewport=-1.56651%2C-1.53561%2C52.2866%2C52.2967&keywords=

compared to a 4 bed in a nicer area of town

It's the flip side of the small age gap I'm afraid - so lovely when they were toddlers and you can dress them like twins but it definitely bites in the exam & uni years!

My dcs had a 15m gap. DC2 worked for 2 years so that she wouldn't overlap with DC1. They both went to uni in expensive SE cities but I do think it was worth it for the experience. DH and I took evening and weekend jobs to increase our income - I was working 90 hrs a week at one stage. Both came out with first class degrees and also did Masters which they got scholarship funding for. Both in very high paying roles now so it was definitely worth it in the end!

I appreciate they may both be dead set on Bristol If they are willing to look at other Universities though, Southampton has a great reputation for Aeronautical Engineering and is very reasonably priced for accommodation. Similarly, Sheffield is highly thought of and has amazing engineering facilities. My DS has just signed up for a house in Sheffield for second year & will be paying £115 per week including bills.

Its all a big con, universities make profit and so do the landlords by a long margin

Bristol is very expensive. Houses in the fashionable areas near the University such as Clifton, Cotham and Redland cost well over a million. Those which are turned into student HMOs can charge rents accordingly; some can house 10 students. Areas near UWE are much cheaper.

Pay for Halls on 0% credit cards Barclays has a 21 month purchase deal now.

Get a loan in your name if desperate.

Oh I feel your pain! We always expected the youngest to do the uni thing, but oldest not academic at all, hated school. Filled in UCAS forms last minute to 'keep options open' then aced her college course and two weeks before the start of term announced that she was going to university!

Savings should just stretch to both of them but our income is complicated - due to self employments and profits etc, in real life I don't draw the £75000 that I earn on paper. We'll basically have no savings left if they both cost £7000/year. Might reconsider premium bonds and hope for a big win!

Hey @CottonOn sorry not rtft yet but wanted to say please don’t beat yourself up about this.

The value of the student loan has gone down and down in real terms and rents have shot up. Bristol (my Alma mater haha) is notorious. But even ds2 in cheapy east mids is paying £5.2k a year for his flat - barely covered by his loan.

They have a cushion of the cash you’ve saved, can they work this summer, they can work maybe in Br?

Also wanted to say you may have more money when they go - not just their food (tho I cooked for five for quite a while lol) but also (in DD’s case, just an example):

• dance class £10 pw
• music lesson £14pw
• band £100 per term
• Guides £50 per term
• drama group £150 per year

It adds up. For ds2 it was more sports club fees and driving him all over.

Well done to your DD’s btw

Dd is in second year and now has a room rented in a house for £215 pw about a 15 minute walk from UWE.
She gets the minimum maintenance loan.
we have to top up the rent considerably and send her money to live - I estimate that we are spending around £1,000 a month to keep her at uni.
Her first year she was in halls but they were right in the city centre, it was absolutely disgusting, mouldy and damp, dark and dingy, I think that was £195 pw. And idea location if you want the nightlife but she didn’t especially get involved in that!
Dd2 doesn’t want to go to uni and ds won’t need to decide for another 5 years so I’ve got a lot to be grateful for!

Just to add to that, she does work when she comes home during the holiday, has a decent well paid job but she saves that for holidays! If we couldn’t afford it we would have had the conversation about finances long before she went and laid it out to her that she would be expected to pay for or contribute towards xyz.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say they need to work to make up the difference. I am not British and in the US where I am from, I think it is much more common to work, a lot, during your degree. I went to a good uni, got a 1st and worked 20-30 hours/week during term time and full time outside. I mostly babysat and nannied which had the advantage of giving me plenty of time to study while the kids were in bed. I did a masters in London and worked a similar amount and was getting paid £10/hour 15 years ago to babysit.

DC will go to art college in September. No fees for Foundation Year but we will pay for £7k accommodation and approx. £500 a month living expenses. It makes me shudder, especially as this is potentially the first of 4 years of this. Pip squeaking time.

Can you encourage one or both to do a year in industry first? They can save up and it will hopefully guarantee them well paying summer jobs and a good choice of graduate roles. Aeronautics in the Bristol area is the perfect profile

Please don’t make them apply for courses at other universities. They’ve got into Bristol which is amazing

My dd has a Bristol offer - the uni website has the accom info and it goes up to 11-12k a year! It is the most expensive place for accom of any uni I’ve come across apart from London. Having said that buses and transport is good so they can live further out in y2-3. I feel your pain

That could be an option if you can pay it off fast

student loan interest is 7.6% at the moment.

Do get them to look at graduate apprenticeships with Bae etc.
also, summer schools with etrust etc.
building skills to tutor maths/ science- well paid, dd did this whilst studying engineering at Bristol. Lots of demand.

Lots of people don't understand how the parental contributions work.

But also remember that they won't be at home and costing money in food, energy etc for most of the year, so you will save some money then.

You've almost saved enough to cover your parental contribution and that's what you need to focus on. They will need to get jobs to cover other expenditure than accommodation

Mine have gone for larger houses with 6 and 8 students.
Economy of scale

DD went to uni in Edinburgh (not cheap either). It was assessed how much her loan would be and we stumped up the balance plus extra. You've got money put aside and can try and cut back a bit yourself to try and save more money. Explain to them the financial situation, make it clear they they'll only be so much money each, so they need to work or possibly work full-time for a year and delay uni.

DD was 330 miles away from home and went knowing she wouldn't have the money to keep returning home. She obviously needed money for food, bills, but after the initial settling in period, she found most of her friends were quite happy to make a meal at home, get drinks in, so it wasn't too expensive to go out. They also loved going vintage clothes shopping (ie charity shops!).

Bills are £80per housemate a month approximately but they have divided them up between each other rather than using an expensive bill split service. This cover all utilities, WiFi and a TV licence for the house.

His sports team society was £60 a year from memory.

He works ad hoc shifts through term through stint and dough. There are plenty of retail and hospitality jobs in Bristol as well as lifeguarding and other teen type jobs. He has a holiday job back home which he gets shifts for when he lets them know his availability. He did have a gap year before going but travelled for a good part of that but was able to save a fair bit over the summer before starting.

OPs kids are going to Bristol not Warwick

I had minimum student loan because of my stepdad's income, however my mum wasn't in a position to help me. I worked throughout uni and although it wasn't always easily it's def doable (and means finding a job after uni was easier as I had practical work experience unlike some other students). It's lovely that you want to help and contribute at all but ultimately they'll be adults.

Can they not go for Degree Apprenticeships in that subject instead?

That's the direction I'd be pushing mine it (at least the youngest one, if I was in your shoes)