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 :(

different angle - most of my friends in final year of uni. the maximum anyone I know gets from parents is 250/month. They work - 12 hours a week in a supermarket or shop is enough to easily cover the excess. the ones that struggle are the ones that live in "nice" halls. Cheap halls, live on toast and tesco value noodles, 2 for 1 pizza night at dominoes and things going cheap from lidl, buy alcohol before you go out - lambrini is pennies compared to proper wine same with cider, then you dont need to pay for drinks in clubs and pubs. wear lots of layers and dont put the heating on - it teaches a lot about the costs of living!! Its an absolute myth that you need huge amounts from parents - me and my ex coped with a newborn living off his student loan and child benefit in a privately rented flat in Exeter, one of the most expensive university cities to live in. Its called working and budgeting.

I would also suggest they surround themselves with students at a similar level. I am sure my daughters thought my £10k a year funding was mean at times because some of their friends had a lot more. One got a 5 story house in Bristol from his father - my daughter rented in there for a while, lovely boy, lovely family but obviously a huge lot of money. My other daughter had a boyfriend with a credit card apparently with no limit on it (which I very much doubt) but he certainly was pretty wealthy and as i had always told her to pay half and he was only 18 I don't think he realised how much less money she would have

'I'm a bit old fashioned - think dcs should have the opportunities we had if we can possibly afford it.'
I know we had grants in the old days and lower living costs, but we had 1 bath/loo between the whole house, no central heating, (just a dangerous gas fire and some oil-filled rads which cost us a lot to use), queues for the computers to get assignments done...things have come a long way and 'standard of living' expectations of are much higher now! Some of the houses we lived in would probably be condemned these days...

"students at a similar level" can be hard to find - they don't tend to wear their relatively low incomes on their sleeves. you can't ask to be housed according to family income level either...

DS1's first-year roomies at Newcastle were all extremely affluent. One of them invited the others to stay at her family's home somewhere exotic & lovely for one of the holidays, & they could all easily afford it, except DS1. He didn't exactly mind not going, but would have preferred to have the choice!

I think university comparison tables should start including both the range of costs of their accommodation, & the number of rooms available at different prices - eg Sheffield (again, sorry but it's what I'm currently familiar with) does have some rooms with shared bathroom, at c. £3.5K, but not many (& quite a lot of those are catered anyway which bumps the per-term price right back up) compared with 1000s with en-suite at £4.5K

D1 is first year uni, DS2 starts in Sept.

We are in Scotland, no Fees for DS2 as he's going to a Scottish Uni, But DS1 get charged Fees for his English Uni, and he is able to borrow that from the Scottish student loans.

Maintenance is a thorny issue tho'..... above about 60k income, you can ONLY claim £900 per year loan, the parent being held responsible for the rest.

We are paying £500 per month to DS1, and his course is 6, possibly 7 years long!
DS2 will be getting the same - his course is 5 years long.

That's £1000/month.............for years and years :(

Ds1 will start uni 3 years from now, so we will be shelling out for 3 DC at the same time for at least a couple of years.

As far as I can see, unless you are close to the cut off of 60k income, no account is taken of how many children the parent(s) are supporting (Scottish system).

Unsurprisingly, we will shortly be discussing borrowing against the house to pay for it.
We are not looking for any "free money" for our kids, but surely they should be able to borrow the money themselves, not based on parental income!

Wow, I have read some of these posts and it costs so much now for youngsters. Ds 1 was partly lucky and also worked to pay his own fees living from home. Due to complete this year he enrolled during lower fees so no loan. He saved his fees from working during A levels. The money earned from 16-18 paid for driving lessons, car and insurance. I don't work and shudder to think how ds2 will manage if he decides on uni. IMO and due to low income when tax credit and FA stops mine are on their own, financially.

Hi Stranded - it was only £900, SAAS loan -SCOTTISH, not SFE :) he goes to an English uni, but the finance still has to be claimed from the Scottish loan company not SFE. £900.... that's all they would give him!

Also - as yellowtip said, sometimes students told not to work. DS1 was told students at his uni/course are not allowed to work during term/short hols, though of course he will try to find one in the long summer holiday.

Stranded Bear, it used to be they could in their own right as a mature student 21 or over. You didn't need to get a loan though and could just have the maintenance allowance. Not sure if this still applies though and useless if they want to go at 18. I know the loan requirement has changed.

Hi again Stranded :), it is possible to disregard parental income only in certain cases - If I recall correctly from last year, the "child" has to be over the age of 24, or if they are "divorced" (well, YKWIM, things have to be bad, and you have to apply for a dispensation to be self supporting) from their parents. So, really we are stuck with it and just have to deal with it, though it will be a struggle, even if we fall into the "High earner" category!

Halfrom - these days, the maintenance allowance is a loan too! One loan for fees, one loan for living costs......... I am old enough to remember actual student grants! Those were the days!

me too, oldmum - I lived very happily on a grant of £95 a term. & I smoked! room rent in a clapped out old house was £2 a week. those were the days...

I've not read all the thread but my dd is at Edge Hill so that she can live at home, she works three days a week at Boots and pays us £170 a month rent

She also runs a car.

I have no spare cash to give her neither can I afford to keep her at home without her contributing. I wish with all my heart it was different.

Wow is all I can say to all of you out there supporting your DC's through university!!!

My parents contributed a total of £0 (in money) to my university education (I have a degree and a masters). They did give me food to take back with me each term but as I was one of five that wasn't a lot, say £20 in value per term. The other students I lived with got a lot more help than I did and actually ended up in more debt because their parents assistance meant they could go out and socialise. obviously that isn't everyone but you have to be honest with yourself and think about how financially responsible your DC is.

I didn't really have a social life at uni (either time) because I was working to a very strict budget, plus between uni work and paid work there weren't that many hours left to me to do all the things that everyone else seemed to be doing. I don't regret it as it taught me alot about the value of money and how to be financially self sufficient. I have managed to get a good job, pay for my own wedding, regular holidays and we have a LO on the way and I have saved enough to ensure I will be able to have over a year out of work.

To be brutally honest though - I think that paying out significant sums for your DC's to go to uni isn't the best investment for that money. Being realistic it takes on average 6 to 12 months for a graduate to find full time paid employment after completing a degree. That money might be better off in a savings account for them to have when they reach that magic goal of getting a 'real' job because they will need it to move out or as a starter fund for their own house deposit. Uni isnt a magic key to well paid work or any work, and 3 years isn't as LO g as it seems. When you finish a degree you will likely have a significant overdraft and not very much if anything to your name. Simple things like paying transport and support costs for the first couples of months after uni and in paid work is also something that has to be thought about.

I understand that parents want to make it easier for their kids because the gap between loan and expenditure is sooooo significant but you do need to ask yourself whether you will feel 'disappointed' if your DC got a 2:2 or less, again being brutally honest the job market isn't hugely interested in these individuals and you may find that your 'investment' simply doesn't pay off, many of my flat mates were in this situation and their parents then had them returning home for an undefined period. This did in many situations create a huge amount of bitterness as the parents felt they had done all the right things by handing over the money so their DC didnt have to earn and could focus on their studies but that wasn't reflected in their final degree classification.

I was asked recently by some parents what I thought would be a good way to go about this and my initial reaction was to let them fend for themselves, but things have changed since i went to uni so that wasn't practical. What I suggested was that the parents could split the money they had planned to hand over, giving them some and saving the rest. this way they were helping their DC financially and so felt they were doing the right thing but also had money put aside for after uni. They had to decide on the ratio of this saving to giving but it has been a good compromise which means that their daughter in 1 and a half years time will have a few thousand as a spring board, just in case she is offered a job away from home, to pay off her student overdraft, to help her through the first few months of working ect.

The reality though InsomniaQueen is that DD2 went to university in September and had a bill for her accommodation that her loan didn't cover. She didn't have enough put away to pay for it as she had difficulty finding work and had glandular fever that impacted on her energy levels. If we weren't happy to support her she would have had to come home again.

I don't feel it is my investment though it is just helping to give my DCs an opportunity that I had for a lot less money - its up to them what they make of it.

InsomniaQueen, even if parents DON'T want to financially support their (adult) children at university, they can be compelled to! In Scotland at least.... "living costs" are deemed to be about 6.5k per year, if parental income is below a certain amount, the student can borrow that amount from the student loan, then there is a tapering amount the student can borrow, and an increase in parental contribution, so a parent might be told, you earn x amount, your child can borrow, 3k per year, you contribute 3.5k per year..... in our position (over the 60k earning limit), DS can borrow £900yr, and we are to contribute the rest (we do, then some more!), point is, we are REQUIRED to contribute that money, the option is not there for DS to borrow it as a student loan.

Even in the good old days of grants, parental income was taken into account and if you were poor you got a full grant for living, if your parents had money then they were expected to contribute (admittedly it was a grant, not a loan and we didn't have tuition fees).
I still remember the "Grace Protest" when students refused to stand for grace at Oxford. It was over a student whose millionaire father refused to give her the money he was supposed to, so she took a job against college regulations, so she was sent down for a term.
I would say that at most Unis you need: your loans, your parental contribution and a job (at least during vacations).

Quite. I got the minimum grant. Realistically, I couldn't have gone to university had my parents not funded the gap.

Admittedly there were no fees, but since all students can access a loan for their fees, I don't see that there's any material difference between the new system and the old.

Re: element of compulsion. What on earth happens if the parents are, say, divorced, and one parent just shrugs and says, 'I'm not contributing.'

All NRP child support stops at 18, right?

I earn very little and have another child to support through college, and NRP father will cease all support he says when DD is 18. Does that mean I still get to carry the can for everything and he just washes his hands?

I had hoped that the new coalition scheme meant that the student took on the debt and paid it off when they were able.

LineRunner funding is based on the income of the parent with whom the child lives. If you earn very little, especially with a second child to support, the chances are she'll almost certainly be able to cover herself between loans and non-repayable grants. Forget about the dad.

Thanks for the info, Yellowtip.

webwiz I fully understand where you are coming from - I was just saying that from my experience the 'investment' issue did cause a problem. Obviously each persons circumstances are different in terms of who is able to support you, how much they can/can't afford to give, whether they want to give or not. I only mentioned the give/save as an idea for those who were able to - not everyone is able to do this though which I accept.

Xenia the maintenance loan is not as much as you say.

In her first year DD got £4950 maintenance loan and her halls were £5000.