To ask what your provision is for your DC uni?

[Bluffyslummers]

I see it a lot on here in the debates of can I afford another child, especially after 2 children.

No one of course knows if their child will go to university or what university tuition or funding will look like, but if your saving for your children later in life, what does that look like?

for instance for us, we have 2 children. When my eldest was 4 we opened stocks and shares ISAs with a lump sum and we put in £70 a month each. We’ve started claim child benefit too, so now pay in child benefit (minus what we have to pay back- roughly estimated of course).

if you’re comfortable sharing, I’d be interested to know what you’re saving for your DC?

I found this thread really interesting actually because our DD is 14 months old and we're making moves on saving for her future.

We recently opened a JISA which we put £1000 into and will put £20 a month in. Not loads, but the bank thinks there'll likely be around £10k in there by the time she turns 18. We are wary that we don't want to put too much in there, as we don't want her to have control of too much money at that age!

We also have a savings account for her where her child benefit goes which I think is around a hundred a month. Considering her age, she doesn't need that much, so some family/friends have given money at Christmas/her birthday etc and we just put all that in there. However, we don't plan to give this money to her when she turns 18, I think we'll use it to support her instead (so we'll maintain control of it to pay for things like driving lessons, uni support etc).

We're also conscious that whatever we save for her we need to be able to match for future siblings we hope that she'll have!

Stem do tend to be available at most city universities though

Which is why there is no one size fits all solution. But in other countries it is normal to go to university close to home. Significant numbers of kids do it. We really need to start thinking of this as the norm rather than an exception if we want to reverse the spiral of debt.

Nobody is saying those doing very specialist courses couldn't go further afield, just that it's creating a system where kids leave university with absolutely enormous debt. Now that the rules around student finance have changed most of them will pay off the debt itself plus all of the interest (which is significant).

Even previously, the mantra of "a significant number don't ever pay off their loan" was only true because the interest on it is phenomenal.

Extortionate accommodation fees

Thinking of Durham by any chance? 😄 @twistyizzy

Lol not just Durham! Absolutely ridiculous costs

Stem has many different types of courses though. It would be like doing History but you only wanted to specialise in Ancient Chinese History. Yes some will do it, some won’t, maybe the commutable ones don't (just a very vague, not based on fact, example).

It will be local lower prestige ones that are not really giving value for money in terms of getting a degree that will take you places. The extortionate accommodation ones are typically London, Exeter, Bristol, Durham, Edinburgh and St Andrews. There are plenty of London and home counties wealthy private school parents who are fine paying the accommodation costs for their DC to go away to university. Locals can choose those universities too and save paying for any accommodation at all.

That isn't true actually. Some of the universities in real trouble are higher ranking ones.

Edited - I might have misunderstood here. Not sure if you were talking about which universities are potentially going to go under