To develop anxiety about not being able to finance DCs futures

[Alabamasunset]

I really need some advice.
Over the past two years, I have developed significant anxiety about the sobering fact that we are not going to be able to, in any way, help our DC out financially as they move in to their early adulthood. And this is really panicking me.
They are 11 and 13.
My 11 year old has SEN and is academically 5 years behind her peers in her reading, spelling and maths.
My 13 year old has received a GCSE forecast from his school, which has predicted that he is going to get bottom grades in all of his subjects.
Their prospects seem depressing. If my 13 year old is going to get the lowest scores in all his GCSEs, and my 11 year old is 5 years behind her actual school year group due to SEN meaning she will never catch up in time to pass any GCSEs, then neither of them are going to get to college for A levels, which in turn means no university.
This translates that their occupations are going to be extremely limited. They won't get in to any of the professions if they can't achieve school leavers GCSEs. And this in turns limits their earning potential.
With their limited earning potential due to poor prospects upon leaving school with poor or no GCSEs, I cannot see how they are ever going to earn enough money to achieve a good standard of living or to be able to buy a home. They will never be able to save up enough money for a deposit. They will never be able to afford monthly mortgage repayments on houses that sell for half a million pounds for a 3 bed semi (we live in SE , not by choice but it's just where me and DH grew up).
The cost of living is astronomical. Food prices are unbelievably high. Gas, electric, water rates, council tax are all unbelievably high. Running a car is really expensive. Buying a home as a first time buyer feels out of reach. How will my DC go on afford any of these things in adulthood if they're not going to come out of school with any decent GCSEs?
Meanwhile, DH and I have no savings. None. We both work in public facing professions (NHS) and what comes in each month goes straight back out again. We can't keep on top of the rising cost of living. It has hugely impacted on us. Our mortgage repayments have sky rocketed over the past year since our fixed term ended and the new interest rate was much higher. We are living on a month by month basis. Our wages come in each month, they go straight back out again on all our living expenses and there is nothing left until we get paid again. We have no hope whatsoever of saving for our DCs futures. Literally none.
They will enter early adulthood and we will have nothing to give them to help them take their first steps into adult life.
DH has no parents, they both died when he was in his 20s and he was left no inheritance as the proceeds from their house sale covered their outstanding mortgage (they had recently remortgaged to a high level before dying). My DM rents, she is not a homeowner. My DD also rents. So I am never going to receive any inheritance.
All my friends are saying that when they inherit houses from their parents when they die in the future, they are going to pass it straight on to their children to help them get their own homes when they're adults. My DC will have nothing from grandparents.
I'm really, genuinely getting in to a state of anxiety about not being able to afford to provide for my DC financially when they start out in their adult lives.
I'm waking at 3am every night worrying about it. I'm getting headaches and stomach aches about it. I'm basically really panicking all of the time about DH and I not being able to help secure their futures financially in any way, combined with the fact that their earning potential is looking bleak, combined with phenomenal house prices and COL crisis.
Does anyone have any advice?
The level of anxiety I'm experiencing about their futures has started to make me feel physically unwell.

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Please stopping stressing about what you think your children won't achieve, and I mean that in a kindly way. You are obviously both hard working and it is great that you want the best for your children. Comparing yours to those of others will only eat away at you and cause more stress and anxiety and not all those other children will achieve high flying professional jobs either.
I have always believed that every child shines in their own way and yours will too. 💐

I think mumsnet reflects a particular part of society that doesn’t reflect real life for lots of people. No one in my circle of friends are saving huge amounts for deposits for their kids or paying off their university debt. Most of my friends kids will, like mine, find their way through school and into college, work, university with parental support but little in the way of financial help.

There’s a lot of different supports out there especially for your child with SEN, different routes into work that don’t follow a traditional academic path. My child has very complex additional needs - I make sure she is getting all the support available to her and, at 13 we’re working with services to prepare and plan what independence will look like for her. It’s hard to know things are less certain for her, but she’s far from doomed.

Try to go easy on yourself, as they go into teen years you can make things as smooth as possible, but you can’t do it for them.

There's alot of trades that earn a fortune. Likely more than you in the NHS!

At least you have one of the options off the table (A levels / Uni) and you can focus on the vocational path for your two.

I have 3 siblings. They all went to Uni whereas I did not. I took an entry level job and worked my way up, to the point I now earn more than them. My siblings earn well too but they have huge student debts.
Kindly, I think you are catastrophising. We all want to provide as much for our kids as possible, which is increasingly difficult in a COL crisis. So it is understandable than you are worrying however, your children will find their own way in life and there are so more ways of helping them than just financially.

You are way overthinking this.

not every child goes to college or university. My niece was the first to go to university quickly followed by my son on dh’s side and same on my side of the family too

I went to college at 44! I’m Qualified and now working in a relatively good job compared to minimum wage which I’m used to. Not everyone is destined for university and earning 80K a year.

Firstly, are your children getting the support they're entitled to? Would a reader and scribe help attainment or is it understanding the material? Would dropping a couple of GCSEs allow for more focus on the key ones?

I presume you'd be happy for them to continue living with you after school so they're not doing to be destitute.

There are a lot, a lot of jobs out there. Don't despair.

There is nothing wrong with going down the trade route. It can be very lucrative and I would say in a world with AI taking knowledge based work I don’t think it’s a bad choice long term.

If your DC wants to go to university (have you asked what they want?) then you still have a few years before gcse. Engage with the school with what support you can put in place to help with them better results.

Owning your home isn’t everything. I’d relook at my value principals…

The weathest people I know didn't go to uni or get high grades...they learnt a trade.. plumbing and car mechanics and started earning at 16. They both bought a ok small house around 21 and 23.

You need to speak to someone about your anxiety. It's unhealthy to be awake at night over this.
Nobody needs to go to uni to earn money. My partner is a builder. He actually did go to uni for one year and left for a job on a building site. He loves it and now has his own construction business.
My friend is a self-employed plumber in London. He charges £95 per hour. Even after all outgoings, I am fairly certain he is not on the breadline. Even better - he works 5h a week as a caretaker in return for heavily subsidised accommodation in return.
I myself left school without qualifications at 15. My mum was also up all night worrying about my future. It was fine. I went to work and built a career. At 32 I decided to go to uni. By that point nobody asked me about my GSCEs. You don't need them as a mature student. 10 years and two degrees later, I have a stable job and income and my mother's worries about me are long forgotten.

My son got all 4s and 5s in his GCSE Results, so not great - He went on to get an apprenticeship as an electrician and can bring home over £4000 per month!
I can't afford to help him with a house deposit either, but apart from paying the council tax he has a home with us rent free which is more than I ever got.

A-levels and university is not the only way to a good high-paying job. There are a huge number of engaging and worthwhile non-A-Level qualifications to do at 16-18 which are more practical and career-focused than A-Levels and suit some brain-types a lot better. Some of these carry enough UCAS points to mean that university is not ruled out, but university is also not necessary to thrive. Twlling a child to fix their aspirations on academic and theoretical rather than practical learning is also limiting their potential if that's not where they are going to thrive. A child who does brilliantly in a practical B-Tech or Extended Diploma 16-18 course in a subject they enjoy and want to pursue for a career is a lot more likely to thrive and be happy and to get a job in something they are good at, rather than one who scrapes the minimum GCSE grades needed to attempt A-Levels and then finds the A-Level courses even more challenging and unsuitable for their learning style, ending up with a bunch of Cs & Ds or worse.

If there isn't access available through a school careers service (ask if they have Unifrog or something similar) it is worth paying a subscription to one of the careers web database services to get your 13yo to think more seriously about potential career options that don't require high level academic qualifications. There are millions of options. My 15yo who has SEN and is on track for some low-to-mid-range GCSEs which will be good enough to not require resits (but not much better) has identified an interesting career path that has a shortage of well qualified people who can do it, and is reasonably well paid, and has identified a non-A-Level course for next year that will be an appropriate way-in to that, and is happy.

As parents you have nothing to feel guilty or inadequate about. You don't need to provide mortgage deposits and other large cash-injections to your offspring. They can thrive without those things simply with the confidence to seek out and pursue the right opportunities that fit their skills and strengths.

OP try to relax. My DH had terrible GCSE results.
He joined his current company aged 16 as an apprentice (he is early 50s now). He passed a basic aptitude test. He now heads a department because he worked his way up and has a final pension salary, an annual salary of £130k and annual bonus. If you look at his GCSE results (one of which ungraded) you would never believe it!). Your worries do not predict the future, have faith in ambition and hard work.

4,s and 5,s are a lot better than 1,s and 2 s though and enough ti get someone on a level three course or decent apprenticeship.

Our mortgage costs have rocketed… call/ check a mortgage broker to see if you can bring down the mortgage costs L&C are independent, lots of people are experiencing this. Did you remortgage or stick on the lenders rate when your fixed expired?

In the kindest way you cannot predict the future and you are writing them off already. I’d put your energy more into letting them find their skill set as they get older: academics are not the only path to earning good money. There are lots of people who didn’t do well or even get any GCSEs and still earning well.
Also there’s nothing stopping them moving to somewhere cheaper, they may go abroad, they may not want the usual set up of buying a house, getting married etc and by the time they do the world may have changed.

There is a route for everyone, it does not have to be the traditional one.

That said, getting a 4 in GCSE Maths and English and ideally in three others should be your biggest priority right now.

Think carefully about GCSE options.

You are in effect writing your child off based on one set of predictions - was it a CAT test? If so, that is how your child performed in one test on one day (and also on a computer). Maybe he was having a bad day? Maybe he was hungry? Have you discussed this with school? Does your son have an IEP or additional support in any way at school? Any school will proactively want your child to leave with 5 GCSEs including Maths and English just as much as you do.

One of my closest friends trained as a teacher and her brother started work after GCSEs as a carpenter. He has ,add more than her at every single part of their lives.

Unfortunately these days somebody will still Need at least a grade 4 in maths and English, which is for a lot of kids is still hard to get

Also stop listening to your friends; at 40 my DH still has both grandparents so if he or his parents were relying on inheritance to help him buy a house etc it’d be a very long wait and inheritance is not guaranteed

Hi OP,

I know you want to make sure your children are okay in the future and what you've described is a conventional route to doing that, which is feeling out of reach to you.

However, it certainly is not the only route to stability or a happy future.

What I would really encourage you to do is to consider your children's strengths. What are they good at? What sorts of things are they passionate about?

Not all careers require us to take the academic route. For example, I know a successful graphic designer who jokes and says "it's the only thing I'm good at", I also know adults who are dyslexic or struggled academically who are doing well in the film and video production industries. You don't have to be academic or an "all rounder" to find your niche in life. So I'd start thinking about where they are strong and supporting that.

Your poor DC, you’ve all but written them off at the ages of 11 and 13. Instead of this mystic meg act predicting the future focus on what you can do to support them now. Can you get them a tutor? How can you support their learning at home? Do your children have access to interesting and stimulating learning activities at home?

The future isn’t guaranteed for any of us and getting yourself in to a tiz predicting it is futile.

So your kids aren’t academic. So what?
Encourage and support them into a trade of some description, an apprenticeship to start with. They can earn a fortune with good skills and hard work.

I hope you don’t catastrophise their futures in front of them? The best way you can help them is with lots of positivity and looking for good opportunities for them rather than focusing on what they don’t or won’t have.

The only lad out of DS childhood football team who has bought a home works as a shop fitter, they are only 23 so still very young. Two have gone in to the army and are having a great time, both got their HGV licences and one is now on course training as a PT instructor.

DH and I worked in higher education, the prospects for many even those with a decent degree from a decent University are not what they were for our generation. Not every graduate will get a decent job because there are just not enough graduate level jobs for the amount of graduates. It was a golden ticket for my generation but around 12% got degrees and not 38%.

When it comes to your own financial situation get over to MSE and have a look for tips. Maybe you do everything already but worth a look. If a deal is to be had I’m getting it.

In my group of friends two out of 7 went to university. One is a lawyer who out-earns us all, but I am a teacher and earn less than my friends who started their own businesses in beauty. Trades people also earn a lot.

What exactly do you mean by "bottom grades"?

Are you mean 1s&2s or do you actually mean the 4/5s, since you seemed to think university was a possibility before now?