The cost of uni

[Seriously79]

I'm not even sure if my kids want to go to uni, but if they do how do we afford it?

I understand that it's based on the family home income. We are quite fortunate that DH (not DS's dad) has a relatively good wage, I work part time to be around for DD4.

Between us we have just over £60,000 a year coming in. But due to car loan, credit card debts, mortgage and life being so damn expensive, we don't have much spare at all.

DS's dad would help out, but I don't think it would stretch far.

I know DS would also have to get a job too.

How do people do it?

We started saving when the trust funds were a thing, a steady but not huge amount each year.
It has always be planned to use these for Uni costs.
As it has been obvious for a couple of decades now that Uni was going to involve parents helping to pay.
Tens of thousands a year is hard to find a couple of hundred a month much easier.

Unless your DC want a career that specifically requires a degree, I'd encourage them not to go to University.

For humanities, its an absolute con. DD is in her first year and has a measly number of contact hours per week. Broke up mid Dec and lectures didn't resume until last week of January. Then she's got 4 weeks off at Easter!

All the while we're paying for her accommodation and she's accumulating debt for her loan.

She would've been better off starting work and us putting our money into a LISA for her.

She's happy but the uni experience is overrated and certainly not worth the debt she's accumulating.

End of rant!

Dc is yr 13.
We are in a pretty affluent area. Lots of families have told children it’s northern unis only. Several we know are having gap years to work and save.
We’ve only got one dc and have saved.
Dc has also worked pt since after her GCSEs and has saved. They don’t pay tax on pt job. If they have a skill like lifeguard or referee they can be getting good money.
Look at Accommodation costs very carefully there’s a huge difference. One of DCs choices is £140 a week en-suite, London is double or more.
Look at scholarships I think Lancaster give one for higher grades and Queens Belfast is £3000 yr 1 to any GB student getting ABB.

DD is at Uni and lives in Guildford 30 face to face contact hours a week. Rent £575 per month plus bills, travel to Woking every day.
Due to DH's income she gets lowest loan. I had saved £100 a month into her child trust fund since it opened. She has choose to save that for a house deposit as her career path means she will be self employed.
ExH pays her rent, she has her loan she works 5 hours a week doing digital media for a bar so can do it when she likes and then does shifts in the bar in the holidays to cover for full time staff taking their holidays.
She is very money conscious, but still has a good life style.

Commuting rather than paying for accommodation

A part-time job to help supplement

maybe a year out and working full time

degree apprenticeship

Definitely worth looking at accommodation costs before applying. London is one thing but at least the maintenance loan is higher (? I think? It is in Wales anyway)

But cities with London prices without London weighting are a nightmare. So Bristol I think, Bath, Edinburgh, Durham, Exeter?, Sussex, I'm sure there are more.

@breathinbreathout I worked in Grants and Awards at my LEA in the 80s.We assessed parental income for grants. Vast numbers did not get the fill grant. It’s a total myth to say parents weren’t required to pay. Even back in the 60s they were! DH’s parents were assessed to pay towards his maintenance in the early 70s.

@JuneSoon Maybe your DC doesn’t understand about doing work outside contact hours? 5 hours is low but it’s not the only work you do. My DD did MFL degree and is now a higher earner. It’s not a waste if you have a career plan and use the skills from the degree to get a job. DD found it worth it.

full grant!

I earn 38k and it looks like I nearly get the full loan. I will pay it back for dd over time as it seems unfair that she gets saddled with it. But every time I work out the figures for what I need to save for her going to uni, it looks like I will be a couple of thousand richer each year (as she’s costing me a bloody fortune at the moment).

It’s a loan now isn’t it whereas in the past it was a grant? Which does seem very unfair as it will be in DD’s name and other students with richer parents who pay won’t have this debt? Have I got that right? So I was planning to pay proportion of her student repayments that relate to the maintenance loan.

@hughs I looked into this and London is so much more expensive even with the extra money that I’ve had to tell dd she can’t apply to London Unis.

We started saving, via S&S ISAs, pretty much from birth.

Two of our kids spent a gap year earning.

Ah fair enough - I was doing a comparison of Birmingham, Warwick and UCL recently, looking at halls and private rentals. While London was a bit more expensive there wasn't that much difference with the extra maintenance. I worked out DD's disposable income after accommodation was £110/£100pw in halls and £100/£75pw private rental. She feels £75pw is manageable even without paid work, which she wants to do anyway.

But - we are in Wales so numbers are probably different. Here, everyone can borrow up to the maximum maintenance loan, which is £15k+ for London. Bristol / Bath / Edinburgh etc would be much more problematic for us.

A gap year to raise some funds

unfortunately the most expensive part (or equal to fees) is the accommodation if staying in halls for first yr, hopefully go down in shared house in later years

we give him 500£ A month which covers everything including travel home/haircuts/clothes/subs

@Hughs dd has her heart set on Edinburgh! I hope I’m right about it actually being cheaper for me when she’s at uni. I’m a (completely) single parent and I figure I’ve made it work this long, I’ll work it out somehow if not ! And yes , she can always work as well!

As the moment I set aside about £400 a month for dd, due to tutoring, music lessons. And she is gluten free which is mega expensive; so she really costs me a lot atm. At uni I would definitely still subside her a bit extra for food as she won’t manage on the usual student food rations - but at the same time it’s tricky for her to eat out and she’s an excellent cook, so I guess overall maybe it’s cheaper !

but I think I worked out with the loan of £8k she would get it wouldn’t cost quite as much to support her at uni. We shall see…

Grand, loan and job for our son. And not choose an expensive university/expensive city.

I expect our children to work.
So did we years ago all holidays, evening shifts and every second weekend. We didn't have a choice.

We pay accomondation for our son because we moved and 'left' our son at university. We also pay some of the tuition fee.

@Countrylife2002 I agree there are big savings when they go - I didn't realise how expensive it is to feed DS until he went to uni 😂
When DD goes I will be saving on music lessons and train pass, that's probably £1.5k pa 🥳
(Not to mention her smoothie habit and insistence that the dog needs a raw egg every day)

Ours are still little but we've already started thinking about this because if our household income stays the same they will receive minimum maintenance loan (currently about £4k a year). Thankfully we have time to save for this but we also live a commutable distance to several universities including a good RG university so I will probably encourage them to stay local and live at home.

where I am from (US) the norm is to start a fund for university when they are born - you don’t expect to cover it all, but you add what you an each month and let it grow over time. It is completely normal for grandparents to give money on birthdays instead of gifts. If you start planning/ saving early on, it is far less daunting, but I think UK parents are a bit too much ‘it will work out’ about university. With some degrees it is common feasible to work alongside study, but for other degrees it is impractical.

@Labraradabrador I think many UK families struggle to balance the books each month when they are on maternity leave, then when they are paying childcare costs. I know we didn't start having 'spare money' to save (or choose not to save) for a long, long time after they were born.

@Countrylife2002 The grants did not pay the full cost of maintenance. Parents made up the difference as they do now. The only difference is the grants don’t exist, they are now loans. In the early 1970s around 8% of dc went to university, now it’s 38%. It has to be paid for somehow.

Of course other options at 18 are available.

We were not in a position to save
DD gets the minimum maintenance loan of around £4K per year
Her rent is 7.5K per year (Manchester) - so we pay the shortfall of 3.5K per year
Her fees are all via her student loan - so £9.5K per year loan
On top of paying her rent shortfall, we give her £500 living expenses. p/m
She has a part time job which gives her another £500 p/m
She has a Santander student account which gives her a free overdraft of
-£1500

So assuming she is at Uni around 8 months of the year, in total, we spend £4K on living expenses + £3.5K on rent. = £7.5K per year.

She is still going to come away with a nearly 40K debt though. Oh to be Scottish....

But - we are in Wales so numbers are probably different

Yes, its certainly a very different approach to maintenance in Wales.

Away from home and not in London the 2024/25 max maintenance that any student from Wales can get is £12150. And of course in Wales the only impact that household income has is the split between loan and grant elements within that overall total.

In contrast a student from England will have their loan amount determined by household income; with the max loan for household income under £25,000 (a threshold unchanged since around 2008) for 2024/25 being £10,227, again living away from home and outside London. If household income exceeds £62,347 then its the minimum figure of £4,767; or £7,383 less than a student from Wales with the same household income could get.

But - we are in Wales so numbers are probably different. Here, everyone can borrow up to the maximum maintenance loan

Yes, my dc comments about how her Welsh friends "are rolling in it"