to be scared when kids leave full-time education

[spanieleyes22]

So I'm currently eligible for Universal Credit with 2 children over 16 but in full-time education. But when the youngest turns 20 I believe I won't be eligible for it any more. I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent or survive without it. They will still be living with me and will be in university (hopefully). What do people do when this happens.

Loads of us are going to be in this position - generation rent plus the end of final salary pensions. The days of parents staying in family homes until their kids are in their 40s are numbered. We’ll have to downsize earlier to save costs and top up tiny pension pots

Could you let a room out to a another university student?

@Blahblah34 I am in my early sixties and could not stay at home without paying rent after 18. It is not new. It will affect more people, but it is not a new phenomena.

Can you not downsize?

if the kids are paying for accommodation for the year and choose to come home then it’s their choice between their own room in the uni accommodation or a shared room at home? It’s not like there will be nowhere to go but they would have to share.

also if they’re home for over half the year then they absolutely should have a job and contribute towards food and bills in that time.

@BobbyBookcase If she is privately renting you are usually forbidden to sublet.

It is hard. I'm just angry that I have to rely on the state at all. I didn't even apply for UC until a couple of years ago when I literally couldn't put food on the table. I hate being reliant on it. Like some posters have indicated I feel like an utter failure. Similarly my ex is doing great not having had to think about his kids for years except a bit of maintenance every now and again when he can "afford" it.

Their accommodation is not for 12 months though. It ends mid May I believe and starts again end of sept. Where do kids live if they don't have parents to go to

@spanieleyes22 You are not a failure. You are successfully raising your children. It is capitalism that tells us we are failures if we are not high earners, but that is not true.

Yes plus a girl and a boy so I don't think it's suitable for them to share a room

Even on this thread people have made me feel like a total failure. And I feel it every day . I honestly don't know how I keep going with such a bleak future ahead. I'm so sad.

@spanieleyes22 Do you have friends? Supportive family? If not then consider starting to invest in making friends. You can have a happy life cheaply, but you need people to spend time with and be happy with.
And take pride in your children and what you have achieved bringing them up. It is not easy to do alone and you have achieved this.

The question was what do you when your kids leave full time education.

I answered.

@whiskeydistillery it is very tone deaf.

Sorry OP. I will be in a similar situation although I have a housing association property with low rent so I should just be able to manage, I won't have much spare though.

Your children won’t be able to pay their own rent Sept-May as well as paying their own rent, they could pay towards your rent May-Sept but that won’t help you if you can’t afford it on your own the other 8 months.

I honestly think it’s worth speaking to your children and see what they actually want/plan to do. I know lots of my friends while at uni spent most of the summers off travelling or working every hour to save up for going back away to uni, so it may be that they aren’t actually going to be staying at home a lot so sharing a room/sleeping on sofa would be fine.

I don’t think you have any option but to downsize and if I was one of your children I would want you to downsize, I would absolutely hate to think of my mum struggling to live & pay rent just so that I had my own bedroom in a house I come back to for a max of 3 months in a year

There is no way a 57yr old woman can put herself in a position to earn more between now and pension age of 67, when that is well past your peak earning years due to ageism and declining health. Busting a gut and going into debt to get a Masters part time over 3yrs to then apply for a job in another 2yrs that might pay you an extra £4K a year from ages 62 to 67 isn’t going to help OP pay her rent now or secure a retirement.

You’ll have no choice but to downsize basically. You may want to be able to offer a bedroom each to your adult children during their leave from uni but it’s just not going to be possible, if you can’t earn more and they won’t be able to afford student rent and rent to you, and frankly asking for rent when they are not there would be terrible.

Also uni isn’t forever so you’d just be kicking the can down the road to downsize again. No in an ideal world it’s not fair that people have gone off to uni got all this debt then cannot support themselves without uc, tho a lot of uni degrees now are a ten a penny or more and more Mickey Mouse ones these days no offence to your actual one what ever it’s related too.

Rents have got out of control while wages have stagnated but again 1 single person doesn’t require a 3 bedroom house, for visits a few weeks out of the year, would it be nice yes, but really sitting on 2 empty bedrooms is much a luxury

We aren't a low income household but have already told our eldest that we will not be paying rent for him to go to Uni. There are four perfectly fine universities within 40 minutes of our house, two of them top performing so he can go to one of those if he chooses the Uni route.

My friend's daughter is paying 10k a year rent while she's at uni and I just find that to be a gigantic waste of money. Although I obviously appreciate not everyone is so close to a range of universities.

My brother went to uni and didn't like his second year flat so just didn't live in it, he decided to commute from home instead as he missed home comforts.

London?

If your child will be living at home whilst being at uni they will get a maintenance loan (I assume it will be maximum as you are on UC) and they will be able to use that to help contribute towards your household expenses.

Yes they will get a reduced loan than they would get if living away from home but the amount of the reduction is no where near the amount of rent they would pay if in halls.

Most students move into a shared house at the end of the first year, with a 52 week tenancy that runs from June to June. So they will have a home for the full year from then on.

Another option might be for them to go to university locally and share the tenancy in order to live at home but contribute. I'm not sure how student loans would treat this though, there is a risk that they'd treat it as living "at home" which would reduce their loan entitlement.

First thing I would do is go to Citizens Advice and calculate exactly how much your benefits & monthly income would decrease. You then have an idea of the gap. If it is a few hundred pounds a month, you may be able to close the gap by your DC contributing a nominal amount, say £75/month. Don’t forget that when they are both in Uni, you get 25% off your council tax. Your utility bills for water and gas (hot water) will decrease a bit. And you may be able to ask work for a few extra hours a week to also help close the gap. This would just be for the years they are in Uni. After they are graduated, it might be sensible for them to move back, work and contribute to bills. You can save for retirement and they can save for independent living- you all save by sharing a flat.

I'm in a similar position but have a disabled partner who I get carers allowance for.
I can't work any more hours on carers allowance and I'm scared to death we are going to be left at the mercy of food banks and charity

FGS, The OP asked what other people did, and I merely answered, although I wish I hadn't bloody bothered!

Also, the employment market is sector dependent as I work for the LA and I'm the youngest in my team of 10 at 52, my 'big' boss is almost 70. Look, You don't suddenly wake up one day and think OMG, my youngest child is 20. If you claim UC, you know what the rules are and some of us just act on that sooner rather than later. I am vehemently against putting financial pressure on young people as I got bugger all help when I was at Uni and it stung, and as the adult it is the OPs job to make sure he/she can pay their own way. Having an epiphany at 57 is just bloody stupid imo 🙄 but the question was asked and I answered. For me, a MSc was less about retraining and more about becoming really really good at what I did already so i could do more therefore earn more. If that's not an option then it's downsizing and cutting cloth accordingly but that's going to be a pretty miserable existence!

You should see how it works in other countries. Where I live child benefit can go up to around 25 years old while the children are still full-time students.
Also, all workers, not just ones on low incomes, pay less tax for each dependant they have, which could include old parents living with them.