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

why is going to uni the only way of 'bettering ' oneself ?

Have you actually calculated what she's entitled to? If you claim child benefit your income then it's possible that with the deductions (for pension contributions and other three dependent children), she may get the full maintenance loan. If you can afford to keep her at home rent free and paying for all her food then it does sound like you could give her a bit of money.

@theredjellybean, sometimes it's not about that, it's about the job or aspiring to the job you would hope to achieve. Certain professions have to obtain a degree and if not, often a degree is a faster track to the job in question.

I think that if your dd was able to save for a year's travelling and after that trip has chosen her university and her subject, she is mature enough to make that choice and get the benefit of her education

Scarftown - She will be fine. Teach her to budget now and your work here is done

How the fuck do you know that? She may only get £3800 loan. She may intend to do a degree which has 30+ contact hours a week, plus study time on top? The uni close to home may be crap compared to the one she wants to go to?

Working to afford to eat may well impact on her degree outcome - what a waste of loan. Going to a crap uni close to home may well impact on her future career choice - again what a crap waste of a loan.

OP did you really not think about this a bit earlier?

shovetheholly - not invisible - your posts make a lot of sense!

Does her degree have the option of a sandwich year in industry? She would then have the opportunity to earn part way through

My parents couldn't afford to pay for my university - DM did work out how much she would have spent on food for me if I was at home and gave me that, I had a bursary for tuition fees, and then funded the rest through working (part time during the term, full time during the holidays), overdraft and credit card (I wasn't eligible for a student loan because of residency issues). It was tough, particularly when a lot of my friends had parents who funded everything so they just didn't have the same pressures that I had. I remember one week having 75p left to last me until I was paid four days later. I think I ate most of my meals at work (in a restaurant) so I didn't have to pay for food. It was VERY hard but invaluable experience

She needs to sit down with a spreadsheet/ chart whatever and work out what her minimum/ maximum outgoings are to be. She needs to have a per year and estimate and something for each of the three years and factoring in having a job/ not having one whilst studying. She needs to understand to make the most of having a year deferred. A serious option would be travelling for 4/5 months and then working the rest. It is her future and she must plan for it. I wish I had done more of the same!

I notice nobody has asked the OP what grades her DD got and what she is planning to study.

I'll probably get flamed for this, but I'm not sure going to university is the right thing for so many young people. Isn't there something like university places for 50% of the 18 year old population?

Some of those courses seem to me - and I accept I could have a blinkered view on this - to have limited value and I'd be very annoyed if I had to put myself in debt for my DS to study something that did not appear to lead to anything worthwhile.

I know from working at a financial institution that many folks, with good degrees are on very basic jobs working for others who joined at the age of 18 and worked their way up through the ranks.

Sadly, it may be time for us as a nation to shrug off the notion that a degree is a good thing and be a bit more critical about what that degree entails. I do feel though, that it is very unequitable that as usual it's the lower income families and students that are hardest hit.

If this was my daughter I would suggest studying nearer to home and living with us for at least the first 2 years. It's not just term time rents, it's holding costs/holiday rents too. She will need to get a job and could even defer for a year to work and save.

She may also be entitled to extra funding if you are on a low income.

Has she already done the travelling or is that money still there?

I'm a bit aghast at those saying this system is in any way fair or that parents have no obligation to help. One poster has already said, lucky poppy, that with full loans and grants, a bursary and a significant amount off the rent she had over £11000 a year to live on. A student with only the basic loan of under £4000 and no financial help is in a very different position. Parents don't have to help but the govt assumes they will. Those two students are going to have a very different university experience.

The system is not fair. Divorced parents can show the student as living with the lower income parent to gain maximum help. I've seen this happen even though one parent earns well over £100k. All this now does is saddle the student with more debt, but the parents pay less. The whole system is open to abuse.

But I agree that at 18 they are still your children and if you can help you should.

My DD's loan covers most stuff, I cant afford to help out more than the odd £20 here and there, she rents a room in shared flat and has to budget really well. she gets about £2800 maintenance grant 3 times a year which is more than my income. Its hard for her and she has to work in holidays. Luckily she started last year so does not have to repay the maintenance grant

Of course they are your children, but at 18 you don't make their financial decisions for them anymore, so you can't take on responsibility for funding what they want to do unless you have the money. Some people don't. My mum was on benefits and couldn't help with uni expenses. I still went. It was the best thing for me. I got a job and took the loans I was entitled to. What else can young people expect but to have to sort the cost themselves if their parents can't cover it?

Without knowing the loan amount and the city she is studying this thread is pretty pointless TBH op.

I haven't read the whole post so apologies if this is a cross post, but for a suggestion how about she defers for a year (most unis will allow this) and works...hard... For a year. Living at home (assuming you can still afford o provide bed/board for her) she should be able to save up a LOT of money if she is careful, and possibly even ensure herself a job for future uni holidays for the next 3 years to help fund herself.

She will still have to get a loan, and probably a part time job whilst at uni, but it will help her along the way significantly.

Many unis will also have hardship funds/grants that can be applied for, but this will probably be means tested, so go against your family earnings, so may not help. But it is certainly worth looking into.

I really hope this helps, going to uni is something many have to put off for a year, and many have to work through (I did) but is often worth it in terms of future job prospects and earnings. It is not just a 3 year piss up, and she needs to know this too...especially given the cost.

She is deferring a year to go travelling

But that's my point trifle. If the parent/s have a low income the student is entitled to extra funding, apparently to the tune of £11000 In some cases. I have no problem with extra funding being available though I am surprised at that figure. But if a student only gets the £3700ish basic loan and no extra help from anyone they will have a much more difficult time, if not impossible. My dds accommodation was £6500, but even the cheapest was over the loan amount. If the parents are on very low incomes there is help available and the very rich can afford it anyway. Those in the middle can get a nasty fright if they don't do the research.

' One poster has already said, lucky poppy, that with full loans and grants, a bursary and a significant amount off the rent she had over £11000 a year to live on'

As many have pointed out, the grants are now gone. It's all loans nows. If divorced parents want to shaft their kids and saddle them with more debt by fiddling the system, they're the ones to blame, not the system.

UIs deferring an option?

Apologies as haven't read the full thread, but we are in similar situ with DS.

The plan was for us to pay his accommodation, plus DS would get a job and manage his living costs with that and the small amount of loan he'd qualify for.

Our financial circs have changed considerably since he applied last year and so he decided not to go to uni and got himself an apprenticeship instead- he began in June.

Results day yesterday and he's done better than expected and so now fired up again to go to Uni. We cannot afford to pay for him this year, so he's applied for and got his place deferred.

He'll save some of his wages, we'll save for his accom costs-(approx £650/700 pm) and that way we'll be a bit in front by next September.

Could that work for your DD?

Thanks for all replys ...I have my answer...yes I'm being unreasonable to expect the student loan to cover everything...I clearly should of been saving for this for the last 18 yrs...my mistake.i left home age 18 .never had a penny of my parents since..stupidly assumed everyone else did the same...the world has clearly changed and the government expects us to support them as adults,otherwise the student loans would cover what they needed...period.

Somehow I completely missed the bit about her going travelling for a year before starting uni next year.

If she chooses to spend her savings going travelling and then comes back to go to uni and has no savings, that is her choice.

I cannot believe that you are even considering selling your house because she has decided to spend her savings on travelling.

I think that you need to sit down with her and calculate what she is likely to receive as a student loan (from 2016-2017 figures), find out what the likely accommodation costs will be and make her clearly see how it is.

TBH it sounds like she doesn't really have much of a clue with regards to the finer details of the student finance system.

This morning I worked out that if my son goes to uni next year he will obviously need to get a loan to pay the fees but if he lives with me he would get a maintenance loan of £6,904 (about £165 a week) or £8,200 (£195 a week) if he lives at uni.

What he needs to decide is if it is better for him to restrict his choice so he can live at home and pay travel expenses out of £165 a week or whether he could pay his accommodation and living costs out of £195 a week.

It is so complicated but it makes sense to start thinking things through early.

the world has clearly changed and the government expects us to support them as adults,otherwise the student loans would cover what they needed...period.

So you expect other people to support your children as adults instead, by making student loans cover everything they need?

I love these people who think "the government" is some kind of magical entity who conjure up their own money out of thin air. You do realise it's other taxpayers' money that pays for this?

God, I hope your daughter does get to go to uni; perhaps at the end of it she'll have more of a clue about life than you seem to have.

She is wasting her money on travelling, so she obviously doesn't give a stuff - so why should you?? She has plenty of time to see the world when she's working after uni, so she should spend this year knuckling down to save money. Don't sell your house, that's crazy!! You wouldn't be selling it for her to go to uni, you'd be selling it for her to pretend she's posh and have a gap yaaar.
As someone who turned down a place at a top uni to go to one within commuting distance from my skint parents' house, I'd say she has to get on with it and accept the fact that you aren't going to be giving her any money.

Spot on, user1471.

'I clearly should of been saving for this for the last 18 yrs...my mistake.'

I can't believe you had four kids and are just now thinking about how uni funding works, just assumed someone else would pay for it.

Ditto your daughter. Saves up and blows it all travelling without a thought as to how uni is paid for.

God, I didn't even see that, expat

Yes, it is your mistake, and yes, you should have been saving for it for the last 18 years, and if you couldn't (and of course not everyone can) it rather begs the question "why did you go on to have three more children", doesn't it?