How on earth are we supposed to afford dd going to university

[Butby]

Dd got an offer from Lincoln uni for adult nursing. She was hoping to get somewhere local to avoid accommodation costs but didn't get offers locally.

I want her to be able to attend but doing my sums now, I work ft earning about 20k, my dh is self employed turnover 24k 2014/2015 which was a bad year.

I think we'd only be entitled to nhs bursary about 3,500 and maintenance loan of 2500. We don't have the money to top this up as have a few debts etc and she runs a car which she pays from from a part time job, and she's been told she will find it a challenge to work whilst studying and placements.

Does this sound at all doable? feeling very depressed that we've never been able to afford to put money aside for this before

They used to give student nurses accommodation at placements. Does that not happen any more? I see a car as a luxury item as a student. You can get a lot of taxis and buses for the cost of running and insuring a car as a young adult

she isn't a tin of baked beans girl

Part of the problem is right there - students generally having expectations of living as if they were working adults. It's part of the fun if the student experience to be quite poor. You learn to cook properly and healthily. You learn to make your own clothes or get good at charity shop couture . You buy second hand books and enjoy the sense of history about that. You go to interesting places because they're cheap. You don't drive a car, eat a lot of take away and expect to go on skiing holidays.

You make your own fun. That's part of the fun and experience of being a student. And I think an important part of growing up.

Very doable - the £3500 pays the accommodation and the £2500 is far more than a minimal payment for food / travel etc. The issue is that you say she's not a budget sort of a girl......
Does a nursing degree work like other degrees, with long summer holidays, or is it a 50 week a year type of a course?

As a student nurse in lincoln she will need a car. She may well get placements at GP surgeries in villages with two buses a week. Saying that some people do manage without a car and beg the student allocation people to keep them in lincoln. Even her hospital placements could be boston or louth with a 7am start and no bus till 8am.

But yes she can go on the bank and there is plenty of work. Would a shared house be cheaper than halls?

We seem to have been really mean to our DS then, he only gets £25 per week for food etc, he does a big online order and also uses local tesco express and Aldi in between

His rent comes from his loan it is £350 per month including all bills, electric, gas, water, Internet this is in a rented house with 2 housemates

They don't have to pay council tax cos they fill in a form or something and so are exempt

He is in his 3rd year at Uni

Yes for DS in his 1st year he was in halls and it was £120 per week for ensuite bedroom study room and shared kitchen but no catered facility but no extra bills, but part of Uni experience for 1st year anyway

But last year a flat was £360 per month + electric and gas PAG meters that he had to top up along with 2 friends

This year it is a house and he has the biggest bedroom and study so he pays more than his house mates so he pays £350 per month and they pay £300 but all bills are included

We just pay his allowance for food etc £25 p/w

When I have been to Uni to collect him, sitting in the carpark outside halls they had loads and loads of take away delivery mopeds arriving all times of day or night so some students spend more than others on takeaways and obviously if they like drinking or parties then that adds to the amount they spend each week

We give DD £70 per week she can still save £30 from that, which she puts into help to buy ISA every month. The savings have only been possible because of her lovely hall mates who are all from the far east. DD has now taken a liking to oriental food and hiw convenient it is. She has learnt so much from them, they really do know how to make cheap staple food go along way. They buy 20kg bag of uncooked rice from cash and carry £14. it has last them 4 months. Lots of stir fry with booked rice. They make fried rice from left over boiled rice. They also buy boxes of Ramen noodles £10 per box contains 30 packs. Soup based noodles which they put poached eggs, sausages, ham whatever they want a great one bowl dinner. They have loose change fund box where they put loose change into and once every two weeks they raid it and go for a meal noramlly Slug and Lettuce half price meals which are on every Monday. Shes learnt more from them on how to be frugal then from us, puts me to shame.

The other thing to realise is that the money you give them for food you aren't spending in your own house

For example we use about 1 litre of milk a week just DH and small amount for me but DS is coming home tomorrow for Easter holiday and he drinks it like we have our own pet cow in the garden, probably 5 or 6 litres of milk for him a week

She could take a year out and save some money. All my nieces and nephews have done that and have enjoyed a year away, saved a lot of money and been ready to study again.

Rightsaidfrederickll
I did a calculation on the student finance calculator, and it reckoned £5963pa in maintenance loan,

If you get an nhs bursary you are only allowed part maintenance loan up to £3263 but that's London, she'll get around £2400

I joined the bank as a carer 6 months into my nursing course and worked shifts around my course. A night in a Friday after week of lectures, shifts throughout holidays, twilights a few times a week. Get known on a ward you like and work hard. I came out with no debts and cheap foreign hols twice a year. Most the student nurses I know do the same now

'My dd isn't really a tin of baked beans girl though'

Neither was mine, more an organic veg and ethically-sourced meat girl. Used to continuously stocked cupboards and endless hot water for baths.
She came back from uni a much more open-minded and flexible person, able to buy from charity shops and make burgers that were 50% courgette.
Either your DD will have to bend her neck a little and live according to her budget or you will have to fund her expectations. Or she'll have to get a decent PT job that pays enough to cover her wants.
I gave mine £200 a month.

My DD2 is an OT and she couldn't have done her placements without a car. No idea what the students would do if they can't drive. She worked as a carer - it was useful experience and also the only work she could find that was flexible enough to fit with the course.

Her dad paid her rent and I paid her £200 pcm and the odd tesco delivery.

2016 is the last year for NHS courses having fees paid by the NHS so she would be insane to take a year out as some are advising.

I think most universities have gym facilities. I paid my DS1 annual membership and it was £120 so not a major expense.

My DS2 is also doing an NHS course (if he gets the a level grades!). He has two offers that allow him to live at home which is what he wanted to do. He'll definitely need to keep his car. Even for our local uni there are placements potentially over one hour drive away and they would be totally undoable by public transport. His insurance has come down a big chunk every year - he's nineteen so we are in year 3 of insuring a car, was £600 this year. Your DD will hopefully be seeing a similar year on year drop which makes the car cheaper. They do get travel expenses for the extra commute to NHS placement over going to uni. I don't know how this will work but if it was 45p per mile I.e. the HMRC work rate this could potentially almost cover a car. May well turn out to be less though!

For my DS1 we pay his rent which was around £5200 for second year and give him £100 a week in term time to cover everything else, food, bills, books, socialising. I also send him £25 a month to cover a mobile phone contract which is in his own name to build up credit history but if he uses more than the contract he pays! There are definitely savings in not having him here - no school transport, no music lessons, no can I have £20 to go out etc. And as others have said a noticeable drop in food bills. I do worry about what is the right amount of cash and ask if he needs more/has less than others, but DS says he can live comfortably on that. I do stock up groceries for him start of term and each time I see him and buy the odd thing e.g. Coat, trainers at xmas sales, but did that before he left too.

In terms of affordability I'm afraid one of the answers is that I've saved specifically for university for all my children's lives. Even when they were small and we had little cash I always at least saved the child benefit. If you haven't saved specifically for university I think you'll probably have to repurpose other savings if you do have any.

I don't think nurses are having to pay tuition fees yet, although there were government discussions about this changing in the future. The non means tested part of the bursary of £1000 per year has been axed in the future but my daughter has been told she'll still get this plus extra on top - this is my understanding anyway

I think she'll be fine. As others have said, a big part (I actually think the biggest part) of going to university is becoming independent and learning essential life skills such as budgeting. Nothing like realising you spent too much on alcohol last night and now have a fiver to last you until the end of the week to teach you about budgeting. I do appreciate things are different now to the way they were in my day 25 years ago but she really won't need to buy herself clothes etc.

On £44 000 a year you should be able to pay some money each month for her.

Check and see what is included in the rent for halls of residence. Ds had a bus pass included in his. Some of the halls we have seen with dd have a small gym and access to that is included in the rent.

I pay for her mobile, gym and give her About £40 per month and pay for college meals

What does all that add up to? Can you continue to give her that as money rather than paying for things? Then it's up to her to decide how she can afford to spend it.

It does teach them the value of money. We give our DD the price of her accomodation. It works out that we effectively pay the amount that she would have got as a grant if we didn't earn so much.

She works in the holidays, runs a car. I did much the same thirty years ago, had car, even toured round the USA. They will all be poor so she won't notice it.

As a student nurse in Lincoln she will need the car. As others have said she could be placed anywhere in a large rural area. The same goes for teaching.

Budgeting can be learned, as can frugal cooking. That doesn't necessarily mean baked beans. I spent a lot of time in the summer before DS1 went to uni teaching him to cook from scratch and how to shop economically. He went from a faddy, pizza type of teen to an enthusiastic cook who can rustle up a meal very cheaply.

Most students are only at uni for 30 weeks a year so any financial top ups are not all year round. Not sure if this is true of nursing, but if it is it leaves a sizeable period away from uni . DS manages to work a bit in the holidays.

A lot depends on her accommodation costs though. Halls vary. I've just been to York with DS2 and the very cheapest rent is £4200 a year self catered, and students are not guaranteed to get the accommodation they ask for. In second years they are at the mercy of the private rent market.

She ought to be able to join a nurse bank - a lot of student nurses do this and seem to be able to pick up plenty of shifts. Maybe she could look at a house share rather than halls?

DD3 is in her 3rd year of Uni. We paid all her rent in the first year we now pay most of it but she also pays some.
Everything else she pays for herself which is the same as we did for her sisters.

So she'll have £200 a month left over from her loan to cover living expenses, and if you cancel the gym membership, budget in her pocket money and don't have her eating at home, could you give her £100 - £150 on top of that? That's easily enough, £30-40 a week to feed herself, £30-40 a week for going out/clothes/everything else. She might not be a baked beans kind of girl, but she'll learn and be surrounded by other teens living on similar budgets.

Will she be home (and being fed by you) for holidays? Has she any savings from her job?

I was a student nurse way back in 2008 and I managed to fund my way through with NHS bursary alone. Zero support from parents aswell. It's totally doable but she's got to learn to budget.