Supporting your DC through Uni

[JugglingFromHereTothere]

DD is currently Y11 - just done GCSE's - and we're just beginning to think a few steps ahead to Uni possibilities. We visited one Uni open day recently - for a course she liked the look of in Wildlife Biology at Uni of Salford. But sensibly says she'd like to see other places to compare, so we've just started to look really.
We also had a look at a typical student room and started to think about accommodation and generally the costs of going to Uni.

So I just wanted to ask any of you with DC at Uni how much financial (or other) support are you able to give your DC? How much do you feel is needed? Am feeling if we could afford it it would be good to be able to pay her accommodation costs for her? (as my DP's did for me back in the good old days) Do many of you do this for your DC?
I gather that a loan for living costs is also an option? And/or DC could work whilst at Uni? Do your DC do this?

Would be very helpful to know how much support you give your DC through Uni and/or to what extent they're able to be independent?
Thanks!

[80sbabe]

Our DS1 has just finished his 2nd year at Uni and we support him financially but in practical and it has to be said quite indulgent ways rather than giving him a lump sum each year or regular funds to just spend as he pleases.

He chose a university over 200 miles from home but near to where my family live and he rents a room with a relative at a peppercorn rent of £30 a week in return for helping out around the house and doing odd jobs.
We pay his rent; monthly travel card; his mobile phone bill and his annual season ticket to a premiership football club which is paid for on the proviso he passes his exams each year.

DS pays for his own food; books; gym membership; socialising; any extra equipment and extra curricular courses he needs to do out of his student loans and earnings from holiday work.

He is employed throughout his holiday periods by a family friend who owns their own business and can accomodate him as extra staff at times when their regular staff are looking to take holidays.
This means there is no pressure on him to work during his Uni semesters so he can concentrate on his academic work.

We also bought an additional runaround car which he has access to when he's home which we insure tax and maintain. We do live quite rurally with limited public transport so this is essential for him to be able to get to work when he comes home. He does pay his own petrol costs though.

To be honest I don't think he realises quite how lucky he is sometimes and so far he has been able to easily afford everything he needs and save some funds too, but mainly that has been because he doesn't have the accomodation costs most students have to cope with which can be very expensive.

It's worked for us and means we can spread out the costs of supporting him all year round but really much of that is due to circumstances and luck rather than good judgement. Despite this though he will still leave university with around £40,000 worth of debt to pay back in loans and tuition fees.

[RedDaisyRed]

I don't thin you can generalise as depends on the parents' income. I paid their fees, plus their accommodation bill plus a weekly sum by standing order. That is unusual. Our older 3 therefore had no student debt and I hope to do the same for the younger 3. That comes out as the same as their school fees so it is just a continuation of the pain for 3 more years if you are already paying school fees.

I didn't go to any open days but some of my children went. Some open days were more helpful than others. Some went to none but still had a great time at university!

[antimatter]

I agree mummymeister - visiting unis on open days helped my dd with understanding what she should take into account whilst choosing her course and the actual University.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Thanks to all for your many excellent tips and suggestions - just as well to start thinking about it all now I think!

[mummymeister]

juggling my DC has a health problem so cant work and study. so its not an option for her to earn anything unfortunately. I would advise getting out in the summer of year 12 to start looking around. it has helped DC to work out what she is really looking for in both a uni, the accom and the course so having looked at 6 or so she now knows which ones she wants to see in Sept and which ones wont suit her. it has also started the dialogue with her siblings which is really useful as well.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Masters course mm?
Sounds like your DC is doing well?
Chin up, graduate tax not debt is how I'm spinning it to myself!

Thinking things over I think some of the main things I've picked up are choose a good Uni town with affordable and available accommodation and some student employment possibilities

[mummymeister]

I have already posted this info on another MN thread but in the budget the chancellor announced that the £9,000 ceiling on tuition fees is going to be removed and that from 2017 (might be earlier cant find the exact link) the ceiling would be scrapped and that Unis could increase their course fee by the rate of inflation. we have been looking at unis. the accom. varies greatly with some coming in around £5-6K and others more. we reckon on a masters course my DC will be looking at around £100K worth of debt by the end of it. makes my heart sink tbh.

[AtiaoftheJulii]

We've said we will cover accommodation. This is only possible due to the fact that in the past I have been a sahm/very part time worker, am now a student nurse, and next autumn when we will (hopefully) have two at uni, I will finally (hopefully again!) have a full time job! So basically I will be working in order to pay DCs' rents

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Helpfully I think we've pretty much ruled out London. The DGP's live near London so we're able to go to things there quite often. But as a Uni city it doesn't really appeal to either me or DD. Very busy, very expensive, and too big to have a sense of being a Uni city. No room really for any sense of a Uni campus? As you say BackForGood the costs of accommodation in London are very high. And even on our day trip to Manchester I noticed the general difference in prices too, eg. some of the art in the gallery we visited seemed vaguely affordable for a change! Also prices in the nice museum cafe
That's how we're feeling about it anyway, though I expect there are some exceptions. And DD is very focused ATM on where might be offering the right course for her. Which I guess is as good a place to start with it all as any?

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

That's a good idea to encourage dd to do more cooking over the next couple of years. She's quite keen to do some cooking and baking and once did a "Come dine with me" thing with her friends which was sweet. I remember I'd only done a few things when I went to Uni and it's one extra quite steep learning curve that you don't really need at that point isn't it? Probably can try to make it just a bit smoother for them? To be fair DM did teach me to make a cheese sauce and a few other bits and pieces. And sent me off with a nice box of old pots and pans. Getting together with others and cooking on a rota is always good if you can find a willing group of friends.
Thanks too for the interesting links - I'll have a read on the student room I think and see what I find there

[Out2pasture]

toilet paper became a hot commodity in my DS3 dorm, so much so it was hidden. two out of three became very good with their money and shopping. dd would forgo food for a new pair of shoes....

[BackforGood]

It's nice to find they might occasionally have listened to something you've tried to help them with, isn't it?

[SecretSquirrels]

You may laugh but I actually took DS round a supermarket a week before he went to show him all the supermarket con tricks. He is another who now calculates the price per kilo (not relying on the shop's own figures), takes the freshest from the back of the shelf and so on. He went off equipped with half a dozen practised recipes but has also learned a lot from his flatmates who (unusually) could all cook. He can make 400g of mince go a very long way. must try him on a MN chicken

[BackforGood]

My ds was a big spender with his earnings during 6th form - money just burned a hole in his pocket, but it was hilarious to take him shopping after his first term at university - to see him comparing prices, only buying value brands or discounted items, checking dates on things, comparing if the BOGOF was better or worse value than the other brand in the slightly bigger pack, talking about what he could do with the veg they were selling off cheaply, etc - I thought my ds had been replaced by an alien

I do think one of the best things you can do for them is to get them cooking regularly each week at home, learning by doing. ds was amazed at how hopeless some of his flatmates were and how much they were spending in comparison.

In terms of accommodation - ds's room was £82 pw. His girlfriend went to London, and for (what he tells me was nowhere near as nice a flat) she was paying out £182pw. That's a MASSIVE difference EVERY week, before you get on to all the other things that are more expensive.

push.co.uk is a good website to help you make choices - you can filter by all sorts of things. You have to register but don't get lots of spam from it and it's really interesting playing round with the info and filters.
thestudentroom is also good for picking up info from people who are actually at the universities.

[antimatter]

We went to see various unis in the last few weeks.
I could see that accommodation cost was the highest in London.
I suspect if you include travel costs I need to look at just over 9K per year of which 6K per year would come form us, her parents.
I am going to make sure I have enough saved so that we don't have to scramble for money when deposits are due.

[spinoa]

Currently the tuition fees are fixed, which means that in real terms they go down every year. The promised increases would be with inflation, i.e. meaning that in real terms the fees would stay the same.

[SecretSquirrels]

This time last year I was on the thread word linked to.
Much of what we have learned agrees with BackforGood.
DS had very little free time and could not have managed to work as well as study. He does however have a part time job that he has returned to during every holiday.
His living expenses were much lower than anticipated. This was due to
a) Frugal shopping and cooking
b) a flat where they had a cooking rota - cheaper to cook in bulk.
c) he is not a big drinker. Some spend a fortune on drinking and clubbing
d) he didn't join in many clubs and societies.

This last one was a shame IMO. Before going to uni there was a lot of hype about sports, clubs and societies but no mention of how much they all cost. I had budgeted for him to be able to do those things but he is tight prides himself on being frugal.

Hoping they don't put tuition fees before DS2 goes........

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Yes I think some cities are going to be more student friendly than others Headofthehive - and a big part of that is cheaper, especially for rents and availability of accommodation for 2nd and 3rd years. As I mentioned we just visited Manchester and it did seem it could be a great student city - everyone very friendly too (even if we did get stuck on a local train in the sweltering heat for over half an hour - I'm guessing that doesn't happen every time?!)

Lots of very helpful experience shared here - thanks again everybody

[senua]

We worked out that his student loan just covered his rent

It's an amazing coincidence, isn't it? Funny how most rents come in around that mark.

[Headofthehive55]

Look at the cost of rent in the areas you are looking to study. It makes your money go much further if you choose somewhere inexpensive rather than say London which is obviously much more expensive. Prices for other things vary too. The cost of a car park permit at a friends daughters northern uni was 500 but at my daughters, £20. No rhyme no reason it seems!

[BackforGood]

With any financial question, there's a HUGE variety, due to all the different financial circumstances of all the MNers who reply.

What we've found (I have a ds who has just completed his first year, and then many of my friends dcs are at various points in University) is that

a) cost vary, yes, from University to University, but also from one type of accomm. to another around the University

b) how easy / difficult it is to get a job varies University to University, but also course to course, as some subjects (tend to be the Sciences) have a lot more contact time, and some (vocational ones) tend to have placements, etc.,etc. - it's not so easy to say "they can get a job". ds worked throughout Yrs 11, 12, and 13 so isn't workshy, but he's not been able to get anything in his University town.

c) I have been surprised how much I've had to pay out at short notice. We worked out that his student loan just covered his rent, so said he could use that to pay his rent and we'd send him 'living' money each week or month. What we didn't realise is that, once you get your grades in August and confirm your place, you then have to stump up some hundreds of ££ for 'deposit' - yes, you get it back in the Summer Term, but it's a lot of money to have lying about 'spare' if you aren't expecting it. They are then expected to put down deposits for their 2nd yr accomm. by about Christmas in the first year - obv. before you get back your deposit for the first room.

d) Finding work in the holidays has been easier.

e) My ds has managed well on the budget he's had - getting really good at shopping and learning that vegetarian recipes are cheaper than meat ones, etc.

f) It's good to think of it as a 'graduate tax' rather than a loan though, as they only make payments as and when their income is above £21K.

[Out2pasture]

DH and I put three though uni all back to back. All three chose schools away from home (we lived in a remote location with no uni's).
We paid for what we could, cosigned loans for each child for what we couldn't.
We asked that the children assist with the loan payments (monthly when they were able).
DH and I continued with the payments until they were all paid off (approximately 10 years from start to finish).
Coming up with monthly small (and not so small) sums was not a hardship, what was difficult and the reason for the loans where the large chunk deposits for residence.
We deposited into their bank accounts $75 per week ON MONDAYS (to prevent them spending it on Friday nights) for food and sundries.
One went to uni full time for 4 years and never found a decent summer job that was of any financial help. One got an industrial job that paid extremely well and was able to pay a good 50%. One attended part time for a long long time and worked enough to pay for a good 50% once we gave him a vehicle :(.

[MedusaIsHavingaBadHairday]

And I have to say that after September when I will no longer be funding either of them... my bank balance should look a lot healthier!!!!!! But it has been worth the penny pinching ...all the way :)

[MedusaIsHavingaBadHairday]

I've just put two of my kids through uni.. 5 years med school for one, 3 years Nursing (so got a bursary) for the other.They are both graduating shortly. We are average (low average) earners and only got a grant of £150. They had student loans, worked through uni, and they paid their rent with their loans..just. I sent £50 a week for one, £30 for the other . Sounds unfair but the nursing student was much better off due to the NHS bursary and asked me to just send £30.

On top of that have been travel fees ..they get reimbursed eventually but we always helped out, books, random courses and rail tickets and money for clothing etc. Ball dresses and sometimes rent bonds.

Both were/are on seriously full time courses.. but both manages to fit in part time jobs.. Medic worked bank hours in a hospital.. nurse worked at fatface. For students on less placement focussed courses part time work is definitely very very doable.

DD1 will have a huge student loan to replay as med school is 5 years. But they only pay it back in installments after they earn 21k. (she will start on about 22k as a junior doctor) It's..in my own option, quite a fair system...and I say that as someone who is neither 'rich' enough to pay their rent or help out on a grand scale, not 'poor' enough to get extra help. It is doable!

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Have just talked it through with dd(16) and she seemed reassured about it all and said "That sounds really good" But mostly, after our first Uni visit last week, I think we're both just quite excited about the idea of her going at all (though obviously for me there's the going to miss her aspect too)

At present our family income is just below the threshold for maximum maintenance loan and we also have low housing costs so maybe things might just work out not too badly? Fingers crossed X