AIBU ,dd of to uni we are skint...AIBU to think the student lone will cover her for everything???

[Petal40]

Just that really...she's not saved.we are struggling .she chose to save to travel.not save for uni.she thinks it's all going to be ok because she will get a student lone....but will that lone cover everything?? And when she finishes she will be £60 grand approx in debt ...well our first house where she was born cost less than the debt she will be in after 3 years..I hope to god she changes her mind and decides not to go

DD1 has just completed her first year at uni.
She got maximum loans and grants and was able to live on them for the year. What caused her problems was the estate agent fees and deposits that she had to pay out for a house share for her second year. Luckily she had an emergency fund she had saved from working last summer other wise she would have been stuffed. She's spending the summer at home working full time to save more money for fees and deposits for her third year. She's paying rent on a house that she's not living in at the moment but all tenancies where from July to July.
So yes it is possible to live on grants and loans for everyday living and halls of residency fees but not for second year living costs.

It is what it is. It's also nothing you really have to worry about - if you can't help, you can't help. She'll get a loan. She'll realise she needs to get a job too. Or she'll decide it's not worth it - depends what she's going to study (if she has a true passion she might make it work, if it's a 'I don't really know what to do so I'll just go to Uni' degree then she might decide it's not worth the cost.)

She can work this out alone.

I not even started repayments on my student loan. Despite the 2:1 I never managed to earn more than the required £15k. I'm re-training. After training will be looking at a decent salary - no degree required - and then I'll have to pay it back, but it's really no big deal. The repayments are small. Now they have to be earning a much healthier salary before repayments begin.

Im going to tentatively suggest she swaps uni to one near home.so she can live at home to save some costs...by providing all her food and not asking for any rent( not that we would) we would at least be helping to keep her costs down....I know it's not the same as living away from home.but dad and I are very relaxed she comes and goes at all hours and we don't mind....wish me luck..thankyou all again x

You need to get your head out of the sand, stop panicking and do an actual budget with your daughter.

Do the student loan calculators to find out how much she will get
Look at the halls cost for her Uni - bear in mind she may not go for the one she puts as her first choice, so take an average figure
What's left over after Halls are paid is how much she has to live on.
Take out of that her other costs: phone, travel (find out how ,much a weekly bus pass is if the distance between halls and lecture building is too far to walk)
Can she live on the remainder - food, socialising, clothes, books. break the figure donw into the amount of weeks she'll be in attendance so it's a more manageable figure for her to process.
If it's too little to live in, she'll need to get a job.

You may not be able to support your daughter financially, but you can support her by helping her to understand the costs involved with living away from home, planning, budgeting etc.

If she plans accordingly, gets a bar job or something (or a shop - I managed to get a transfer from my retail job in Brum up to the manchester branch when I went to uni. Saved me looking around with all the other students, and they were delighted to have someone with experience!) adn lives cheaply she'll be fine. Get her a Jack Monroe cookbook and buy her a bus ticket home at the end of term (and another to get back to Uni the next term!)

The op doesn't have to be on a low income to be financially struggling. Plenty of people with good wages have huge outgoings and are scraping by, for various reasons. Unfortunately these students will not qualify for much in the way of help, just the minimum loan which is about £3700ish. In this situation I think the student is in much more trouble. Minimum loan which won't cover accommodation and no extra money for food and living costs.

It probably cost us £400 a month while DD was in her first year, as she got the minimum loan. She had worked and saved about £3000 during the sixth form, she spent 2/3 of that and is building it up again this summer. She may get a job during term time but doesn't have to.

I believe there will be no grants next year, just higher loans for those with parents on a lower income. I agree that a hard financial conversation is needed and some plans made to earn some money. Coming back from her travels in time to earn some money sounds sensible.

Also petal our older DD did one year living in at a local university but then lived at home for years 2&3. She had no loan for those years, worked part time and paid no rent/ food costs etc. It's not the ideal way to do university but she saved a fortune, she's just graduated and bought her first car with cash.

Uni is really expensive. I left in 2000 and I'm still paying off my loan. I also worked evenings and weekends whilst at uni because the loan didn't cover bills or spending money. That was 16 years ago so I imagine it's even more expensive now. She will just have to get a job and she will be ok. Lots of students do it but they do need to work too.

Just a thought, is she about to start her first year and if so has she already applied for accommodation? We had to pay a £300 deposit for halls several months before our son started his first year, obviously that was before his student loan came in so we had to pay that out for him so bear that in mind.

I do not think you should feel bad for either worrying about your daughter or for hoping she changes her mind about going to Uni. Recent studies ( cannot recall details but was discussed on radio 4 extensively) show that the earnings gap bwtween those who have a degree and those that dont is closed or closing over a lifetime earnings.
The persuasive enlargement that getting a degree almost certainly guaranteed you a better paid job in the end and over a lifetime you earnt more is now losing strength. especially if you factor in repaying loans.

If you dd is going off to do a degree with a very strong directive vocational bend..i.e.medicine/dentistry/vet/teaching then i would say yes worth it , and she needs an urgent sit down with a budget.

If she is going as she doesnt really know what else she wants or should do now and it is ' what every one does' ...then i would be having a very very serious discussion with her about whether she really wants to and maybe she would be better looking at a corperate post school training programme or study and work or an apprenticeship.

If she is going to have to get a part time job anyway to just scrape enough money to get a degree and still have debt is the degree really worth it ?

Im going to tentatively suggest...

I wouldn't. The most I would do is ask her what the difference would be between living away and living at home. It really is her business not yours.

We were in the position of having a reasonable income but high costs on commuting and mortgage, which of course aren't taken into account in loan calculations. DS got more than the minimum loan, but less than the maximum, and no grants or bursaries. It was enough to cover accommodation if he picked the smaller, grottier rooms, which he did. Luckily he had some savings he could use for deposits, as we couldn't help with those.
We worried that we'd struggle to help out, and admittedly it did seem painful at first, but over time we bought far less food and spent less on utilities, so once we'd got used to that chunk of cash leaving our account every month we found it didn't make a huge difference to our finances.

It covered everything for me, and I was in London and didn't work during term time. The most help i got from my parents was a food shop my first night of the my first term (which I was very grateful for, I'm just putting it in context).

Graduated 2012.

She can get a job. When I was at university, we all had part time jobs. Waitressing/bar work etc etc.

Also, some people do come out of uni with debt and can't get a job, but those people don't pay back the loan. You only pay a percentage once you earn over £21,000 these days (used to be £16,000) so it's not like other debt. In fact I almost wish they didn't call it loans and called it a graduate tax on earnings instead, because that's more like what it is. It's not like taking out a bank loan or credit card.

she's gone off on a long holiday (which she has paid for). Is she aware that there isn't money to support her at uni? If not she needs to know now, so she can come back to the UK and start working.

there will be other chances for long holidays.

Let her sort it out!

She'll get a job like everyone else does when they live in, there's shed loads. If she's in halls she'll get into the swings of things, her mates will be working and they'll get into the working student life. Tbh I have known people to live off the loan though.

And the debt when she qualifies, well it'll come straight out of her wage and the repayments are in line with your income, it's not a huge chunk out of your wage each month. I actually don't even know how much comes out of mine, DP's is £15 a month.

I had the full loan - obviously one for tuition fees and one for living(maintenance) and lived off it easily, with a Saturday job - 9 hours. Nobody I lived with in halls (12 of us per flat) worked more than that.. Some didnt work as had very full on courses and exams. Those who didnt have full loans lived off loan and parent contribution or savings. I went out most nights too! Interest free student overdraft bridged the gap between loan pay days, so was able to kit myself out before the money dropped into my account. So - it really depends on loan amount she will be getting - and of course the area for living and rent costs!

Speaking as someone who has worked in university admissions, I would say that the day after A Level results may be too late to 'suggest' that she looks into swapping to a different university place.

Depending on her results, obviously, but just because you get into one institution having applied before your A Levels doesn't mean that your actual results will get you into different institutions once you have them in hand (in some cases, you wouldn't even get a place on the same course with the same results if you applied post- as opposed to pre-A levels).

Before she goes off travelling and spends all her savings, she needs to have a realistic look at her budget for when she does go to uni, and work out if she can afford it or if she needs to curtail her travelling.

She should be okay, depends on how much loan she is getting - I got a loan (which everyone gets, not means tested) of about £4,000 plus a grant of about £4,000 (which was means tested) plus a bursary of £1,500 which came directly from the Uni for low income students plus about £2,000 off my halls fees which again was specific to my Uni for low income students - so in total approx £11,500 - my halls fees (ensuite and 2 meals a day provided, southern Uni) were about £4,000 so that left £7,500 or approx £600 a month (ish) for everything else which was do-able.
So it depends on what student loan she is getting really, if she is only getting the basic loan because your income is deemed too high for the grant then yes she might struggle. If you are on a low income and she is getting the full loan and grant and any bursaries offered by the Uni then she shouldn't. Either way she should be able to get a part time job which should fill the gap. I think a lot of people on here who talk about giving their children extra money for Uni is because their household income is such that their children only get the basic loan of around £4,000 and thus has to be topped up, especially if their DC are not working.

Lots of good ideas thankyou everyone

Grants dont exist anymore.

Apologies if this has already been said - I've only skim read

The uni holidays are very long. DD finished on May 18 and doesn't start back until the 26th September! Lots of summertime earning potential.

How about if she lived at home for the first year as a compromise?

People will tell you that she will have to pay for accommodation over the summer (after first year) to ensure she has accommodation, but if she isn't fussy and doesn't mind moving two or three times she can give up her rented accommodation over the summer - or sublet it, depending on the landlord - and get somewhere different from the following September.

She obviously has a lot of initiative if she has got herself organised to go travelling so that's hopeful for her future earning potential.

Literally, this 'debt', it's not a debt. Nobody cares about it re. mortgages or anything. It just sits there. If you pay it off at the paltry amount per month you have to pay then woo. If you don't then you don't.

I left my last funded course in 2005. Still got about £9k left to pay off. Who cares. I might pay it off or I might not but it doesn't impact my life nor has it affected credit score etc.

She'll just need to get a job. Like the rest of us! And I was one of those 'squeezed middle' students whose parents earned too much for full loan but not enough to pay me the extra. So... I was creative and got a lot of odd jobs here and there. Plus don't forget most courses have long holidays so she actually has about 20 weeks of the year to work to earn money.

She will need a job. My best friend has lived at home contributing whilst working part time (taking on extra during holidays) and commuting. The only debt she will graduate with is the fees, which are paid back only when she earns enough with no interest. She hadn't got into a overdraft st all. It is possible. She had no money from family at all. If your daughter wants to live away from home she will need to work, live frugally, and accept that she will need an overdraft. Most banks offer good student accounts. It's better to avoid halls because the cost is higher than living in a house share overall.
Doing it on a budget will mean she won't be able to go out partying all the time too, and will need to be careful with food costs.
I have a lot of respect for people who do it without parental support, and they tend to have much better life skills st the end.

Literally, this 'debt', it's not a debt. Nobody cares about it

And there you have in a nutshell, why we have had a credit fuelled financial collapse

Value is opinion, debt is fact!!