Realistic plan to pay school fees or not?

[cargear01]

Hope to save 60k by the time ds is 5, hes 2 at the moment and I have 24k.

I am able to save around 1k a month towards this at the moment (I do this without factoring in the cms below and can manage).

it would mean when school fees start that I could pay half from the 60k and half from my own income. I haven’t included cms in my calculations as I don’t want to ‘rely’ on it (insane that that’s the state of this country but I’m working on worst case scenario). That said, ex currently pays 700 maintenance and he is a workaholic so I suspect it will go up. He works in the nhs so can’t really get out of it.

do you think my plan is doable? Should I be doing more? Is it totally unrealistic? I have assumed fees will be around 18k a year when dc starts, taking account of inflation.

It would be beneficial to pay the fees from this trust, you will then benefit from your son's personal allowance.

Absolutely. Read Martin Lewis Money Saving Expert about fees. It’s utter madness to think that they need to be paid from parental income or savings.

That’s the maintenance loans. The fee loans are 100% regardless of parental income.

but I recall hearing that the loans are based on parental income, and often inadequate?

@AllTheChaos Tuition fees are paid in full by student finance. Maintenance loans are for accommodation and living expenses, and these are based on household income.

Both have to be repaid back to Student Finance once the graduate is earning enough.

Halls fees are often more than the maintenance loan and parents are expected to top up.

We paid DD's rent and she lived off her maintenance loan which was about £6k a year. Her first year halls were £134 a week for 38 weeks, so just over £5k.

Years 2 and 3 rentals were for 50 weeks and cost pretty much the same. This was in one of the cheaper university cities for accommodation.

@cargear01 Sounds like the best option for your family. I’m sure you can make it work.

My advice as a lone parent is this.

Find the best primary school and best wrap around care you can, child minders are often better.

Work on your career really hard and save.

Private school for secondary.

This is what I did. It's worked really well. Unless your DC has SEN I would say state primary that is really good is absolutely fine.

Small class sizes in a nurturing school is amazing but you need to pull that lever at the right time.

And besides, your DC might turn out to be really sporty for example so a different school would be better.

Also I do school plan so I pay the fees monthly, makes it much more palatable.

Visited a guy today, he had no heating, he can't afford it.

But suppose you have another child? Apologies if this is definitely not going to happen for completely watertight reasons!

Plan 5 student loans are a bit different to the ones that came before, they run for 40 years for a start. A whole Guide to them here from Martin Lewis. Don’t assume they are the same as what came before.

We cant get a student loan as we are in Jersey, so have to self fund. We can get the tuition fees paid for though depending on parental income.

DS1 is going to Brighton to do a music degree at a uni without its own halls and so accommodation for the first year will be around £17k pa and then following years hopefully shared housing which is about £12k pa.

We will have to pay his living costs, travel, flights home etc and so are budgeting on around £20-£25k pa

All depends on what you are able to do for your kids. I was lucky to have parents who paid my way through uni - and it has been priceless not having any student loans deducted from my salary. We pay enough taxes as it is - why add another tax (graduate tax/loan/ whatever you want to call it) to their burden if not necessary? I dont know any adult that relishes seeing loan deductions from their pay packet and have yet to meet even one person who does not have loans and is not extremely grateful to be so unencumbered.

This is if you can afford to within reason of course. But I wouldnt say it is a waste of money to plan to pay uni fees/maintenance etc if a parent can afford it. It has meant we have been able to save up quickly for a home, family etc

Aha! I hadn’t realised there were two different types of student loan, thank you!

I didn't until DD was applying to university @AllTheChaos.

You might not need to pay all the way through secondary too. He could get a scholarship or he might like to go to a grammar school.