Funding your cherubs through Uni how?

[Piffle]

Ok
Do how are your Uni starters being funded?
Specifically if they can only get the £3575 amount of maintenance loan?
We are really struggling to budget everything :(

true about 12 month contracts, but as they get older & more attached to new city they often decide to stay put for most of the summer anyway, esp if they have a job there (DS1 loves Newcastle, we can't pry him away)

goinggetstough, the £60 is just rent & there will be bills on top, but even so his living costs will be much lower than this year

The fees will be higher of course but with ours I paid the same as school fees which was abotu £10k a year so felt no immediate pain. So paid them £100 a week for food, expenses, travel books etc, paid their hall rent direct and paid the university fees direct, such as they were and of course let them live here with food etc at home in holidays. They sometimes had jobs too. Three of them thus graduated debt free. I hope I can make sure the younger ones are in a similar position.

My DDs are at a university where they aren't allowed to have a job during term but they all work at home in the holidays in season. So far they've been entirely self-supporting though will have significant debts at the end. With the small caveat that they're all welcome at home in the holidays and are fed, watered and heated to their heart's content.

I can't see the deterrent of student debt, nor can they.

DS starts in October and gets a bursary of £4,300 from his university which significantly lightens his load.

student debt as such shouldn't be a deterrent for anybody, of course

but for those families whose income reduces their student's loan, & eliminates extras like bursaries altogether, but whose family circumstances limit how much financial support is available to a student outside basic holiday maintenance, life is tough.

Most of us can only dream of a 4-figure bursary, let alone an amount of £4K+

Ponders exactly!

My income is notionally reduced because I have quite a few children to support. I thought the system was designed to avoid a middle income poverty gap? Ponders, does the amount you need to find significantly outstrip the amount it would cost to support him at home?

'Basic holiday maintenance' costs me rather a lot, though I haven't quantified it.

I thought you could get a loan for fees and a loan for maintenance so parents do not need to pay anything. The maintenance loan is about £5500 outside London and £7600 a year in London. Surely they could afford their hall costs from that and with a small holiday job cover the rest if the parent was unable to pay anything? if I compare that to what mine had which was rent covered by me and £5k a year I suppose that was more generous but not that much more.

I'd love to able to pay his every cost and hand him a fabulous uni experience with no serious worries but I cannot magic up £7-8k per annum...
We are having to magic up £3-4k and that means we are servicing it as debt ourselves on the whole...
Plus next year we love Child Benefit no doubt DLA will be slashed as well at some point...
I mean I'm all for making sure those in serious financial difficulty do have a system for getting to Uni if they want to... It just seems unfair that that the squeezed middle get access to the cheap student loan for maintenance cut, I mean it is the STUDENT's debt after all...
There must be tons like us but worse off than us who simply cannot fund their kids...

no Xenia, if you earn over £60k you only get £3575 maintenance

If you are on an income of over 60 k then surely you can support your child through uni?

I think we (as in the Brits) need to look on the unis/debt thing a little more like the Americans.

They take out low cost loans, it's a given that the kids get a job to pay for living costs and they pay off the loan over the course of their life time, hopefully with a good education that helps them earn more. They look on it as a long term investment.

Why are we so about educational debt?
You only have to pay it back when you are earning above 21k & even then not a huge amount per month.It's manageable.

No-one blinks at a mortgage, it helps you get your own home, even if its a struggle.

It's going to be a helluva struggle for me to get my DD through Uni but we'll do it whatever it takes as it's worth it. We'll cut back somewhere else, and she is already saving for Uni in Yr 12, I think it encourages a good work ethic.

I know a degree doesn't guarantee a job long term but I never think education a waste.

if you have more than one children and one went before the fee increase they will generally have smaller debts. It seems rather unfair to let a younger child or children leave with large debts if you can avoid it. We are expecting to pay something like 60 pounds a week on top of accommodation costs. We may give them help with paying off their debts when they leave. They will be expected to work in the summer and to look for any bursaries they can to part fund their social life. Most students seem to think they can manage on 50-60 pounds a week and still have some social life.

Piffle any generous relatives who might help out? Mine get the occasional cash gift and have always put it towards their university savings/debts.

ellisbell see thats what I mean, we (all not just you!) look on it as a debt not an investment. Not anything to worry about or be ashamed of just gets sorted over a lifetime. I think its a shame that the kids have to worry about this or not do a course because of worries about debt.

If family can help pay it off before then marvellous, but it is the childs to repay that is the deal for getting an unversity education.

I can see it might be unfair if you have one child who went through before the increase but that life isn't it they won't always be treated the same or fairly unfortunately!

@Yellowtip "My income is notionally reduced because I have quite a few children to support." - I didn't think this was generally taken into account for most things? Our DD is the eldest of 4 - will some kind of allowance be made for this when she applies for student finance? Otherwise, combined income from DH and myself would probably tip us over some limit or other...though I'm seriously beginning to wonder whether I'd be better off not working such long hours as a self-employed person and paying my taxes ...

f you are on an income of over 60 k then surely you can support your child through uni?

HAHAHAHa, mortgage, disabled child, high petrol costs for long commute... car loan
Spare £5k?
I think not
We have not had a holiday for 9 years, and have very little disposable income as I cannot work due to DD...

sorry that sounded a bit

simply put we cannot easily find the amount needed, but we have to so we will.
it'll mean the youngers kids going without some things mind you and us too.
It seems mad that students from a poorer background will have more of a debt?
Why can all students not borrow equally? DS1 is happy to borrow all of it if he could...

We have some high outgoings for various reasons, selling our house and downsizing is a real option in about another years time...

Well Piffle then he has to pay his own way.

I'm not suggesting anyone has a "spare" £5k these days but spread out over the year it should be do-able if you have regular employment.

Can you look at renegociating your mortgage as the rates are so low, getting a cheaper car,or transferring work nearer home?

I'm sure you've thought of all these things, just thinking out loud.

Okay, on the site I just looked at it said the figures I gave and did not mention
www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/Gettingstarted/DG_171572 under maintenance laons. It says £4950 (not London living away from home). if it is capped a £3575 if the parent income is over £60,000 then that is £1375 a year difference. £26 a week for the parent. Or they could make it up through jobs.

if you did borrow the £4950 on top of the £9k fee that is about £42k of debt after the 3 years and I think it's paid back at something ilke 9% of your salary over about £21k and written off after 30 years. My children are likely to have been in jobs where they would be earning reasonable sums so I'm quite glad they graduated debt free but that was because I made wise career choices myself as a teenager.

@hottie: yes, each dependent child and each child still in full time education notionally reduces your actual income (I think by £1000, I'd have to check).

Sorry, poorly written: in other words all children of the family, including those at university.

if DH were to work in Sth Lincs or environs his pay would halve.
We are tied into our mortgage til September but will renegotiate though we are on very low rate already...

I expect DS to work holiday only, term time weekends IF his schedule permits and I know that Maths is a very demanding subject at Bath.

We have had to buy a new car on finance as our old car was costing a fortune, this new car actually costs less monthly, we need to best mileage as well as big enough transporting 3 large dogs and 3 kids.... WE got a VAT reduction and 0% finance, to buy a cheaper car would mean paying 8% on a loan so this was our best option...
It is ok we can afford a basic £150 a month, his natural Dad will pay another £50 and top up as and when he can afford it, plus we pay the difference between the maintenance loan and halls costs another £1200

Do able yes but not without some serious cutbacks

@Yellowtip - thanks for explaining that. I now have a better idea how much I need to reduce my working hours by. It's certainly something and I'm glad to know the cost of bringing up other children is taken into account, though I'm sure the figure for each of them would be more than 1,000 if you added it all up!

Xenia, Ds1's halls alone are about £5k
without food and expenses, travel etc
He is doing a good Maths degree (hence choosing Bath) and is gifted and hard working so will likely end up in a decent career himself one day.

May be ours were £5k then. That would be for my girls about £1 k fees, £5k hall and then the £100 a week ie £5k a year sum I paid so about the same as a year's day school fees. My son paid £3k fees as it had gone up by then. It was still round about the cost of a day private school place so didn't feel like new pain. The younger children will pay £9k fees so that is significantly more.

DS1 has gone to an excellent boys grammar, we could not have afforded fee paying schools and actually around here they aren't any better tbh...

I get the impression Xenia that you are far wealthier perhaps anyway ;)

Piffle I went to uni in your DSs position - my parents were high earners but with high running costs. I worked as a tutor, I transcribed because I was a fast typist, I cleaned offices very early in the morning so I could still go to class. Basically stayed away from 'typical' student jobs because the pay was crap and everyone was after them so there weren't enough hours. And I still had to take a private bank loan for my LPC year because I simply couldn't hold down enough tutoring to live on as well as study enough, but I would do it any differently in hindsight. I am so grateful for my education and I don't resent my parents at all. It was my choice to make and I am really glad I did. First adult decision etc. Don't worry about not being able to support him in the way you might have imagined, because he will gain enormously from the experience regardless.