How much financial support do you give your DCs at uni?

[Tigerblue]

Just thinking ahead here, but just wondered how much financial support others give their children at uni? We have a friend who pays for DD's accommodation but not sure we could ever stretch that far. We've saved a bit here and there, but I'm now thinking we seriously need to start saving more as DD will be going in two years time.

I agree - we had very little idea of how much it would actually cost us. You quickly realised that the (approx) £3.5k maintenance loan doesn't even cover accommodation (and even if you go for the cheapest accommodation it would literally only just cover it). So if that's all they're entitled to, someone's got to find some money for food and other living expenses. Some students could work enough hours to earn enough to cover that, but realistically it's parents who foot the largest list of the "bill". I might be unpopular for saying this but I think the system feels a bit fairer now that students from lower income backgrounds get bigger loans rather than being given grants.

So, back to one of the questions, if we pay somewhere between £3.5k and £4k for accommodation and they get £3.5k maintenance loans, that gives you an idea of the amounts needed.

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Son in his final year (although he'll probably go on to do a masters but he can get a loan now to cover that), and dd in 4th year of 5 year vet course. Might eventually be able to afford a holiday in something other than a tent!

My DD has taken out the tuition fees loan of £9,000 (per annum) which she will have to pay back.

She qualifies for the maximum maintenance loan of £8,200 (per annum) which she will have to pay back.

Out of that she pays her accommodation which is £5,420. The rest has to pay for food, books, laundry, clothes, travel, going out etc. She is getting a part time job.

As per the last few years, I have carried on paying her mobile phone bill and give her £100 a month. Depending on how much she earns, I might stop that soon.

Wow ladybird. So your daughter is borrowing roughly £13,000 per year. Is that a three year course?

These poor students having all that debt at the end. I was the first year of having to pay tuition fees and that was only £1000 a year. Lived at home too so luckily no debt. I dread what it will be in 10-13 years time when my two are possibly wanting to go.

Yep! Well this year it's £17,200. And yes, it's a three year course. Awful isn't it? A few years ago we were really well off. She was at a private school aged 8-16. However I'm now a single parent and have recently stopped work so I can look after my elderly father full time. Hence no money so she qualifies for the maximum loan. The grant was scrapped last year. She can borrow more, but she has to pay it all back. I wish I could have funded her myself, but life didn't pan out how I hoped!

Yup, minimum loan here - £3700. Halls last year were £6250. We pay the accommodation, she uses the loan for living & it is more than enough. I also pay her phone (£10/month) & her car insurance. No she doesn't absolutely need a car although she does have to travel to places that would involve 3 buses. She bought the car out if summer earnings.

Also the interest on student loans starts to clock up from day one at 3% above RPI, so 4.6% at the moment.
I would love to know where to invest £17000 a year in order to exceed that rate of interest as someone up thread suggested.

I had no idea a student loan was means tested.

I mean, a loan is a loan - you are supposed to pay it back?

Wow. That's all really quite scary. I guesd when mine are old enough to go it will be out of price range for many. Maybe I won't need to worry. Most people will perhaps get jobs instead of going to uni and maybe the jobs that require a degree will have reduced fees to encourage people. I don't know. Maybe it will end up more like the American system. Scary really.

Yes Grumpy but the vast majority of students won't ever pay it all back.

Scarily, my daughter will have about £63k of debt when she graduates. I used to get quite upset about how unfair it was, especially when the MPs who decided to do it had free degrees and grants. But now we just see it as an extra tax. She can't be a vet without doing the course so c'est la vie

We paid for accommodation and they paid for their living costs out of their loan and part time jobs if they had one.
DD3 is actually still at uni although having a break until January. Repeating a module of her 3rd year as had mitigating circumstances last year.
Anyway when she goes back we will pay her accommodation
All three of mine paid for their own phone contracts.

we are paying accomosation costs, about £5,500 and also give her £50 week.
Ontop of this she as her minimum student loan of £3800.

Once she's settled down we'll review the £50 week if she doesn't need it, and I can start saving for next year when we have two of them at university.

We are in a good finanacial position though, we live off my husbands salary and mine is just used for Uni expenses. DD1 is on a course where she wouldn't be able to work to top up.

we pay ds1 rent for his college halls(very cheap at £3600 a year)
he then lives of his minimum loan. We cant afford to give him any more than that, so technically he gets less than if he got the full loan. He is also at a uni where he isn't allowed to get a job.
The year after next we will have 2 at uni.The uni's dd is looking at are much more for rent (around 6 - 7K a year.) We have 6 dc all together so are already stretched.None of them would get more than minimum loan as it stands currently. I am really hoping they don't all want to go to uni tbh as no idea how we will manage financially!

BTM It also depends how much they earn in the holidays, especially the summer. In term time and the short holidays, dd gets £15 a week top up, plus we pay for some books, bills, cheap phone usage, travel home, society subs, a few good quality sensible things like a waterproof jacket and the odd starting bonus. I would say her university town is not cheap. We pay her accommodation and she gets the minimum loan and does a bit of PT work for the university. In the summer of her first year, she earned a fair bit but this summer it was much less and we had to top her up quite a bit (technically a loan out of fairness to ds but am not expecting it back any time soon). There are lots of variables - dd does casual exercise classes and one sports club but I suspect ds will want (and we will want him to have) full membership of the sports centre or whatever when he goes and they are quite expensive. I am not sure we got it right with dd. It is all very slippery!

Both DDs only get the minimum loan. We give them over the year approx£5k each (which doesn't cover the accommodation in full). Plus we pay for their gym membership, phone contract (last year's xmas present) and do the odd food shop. Both have some savings from holiday jobs and birthdays etc. I am meeting DD1 this weekend and am taking her shopping for a new uni bag and some boots. I just hope they end up getting a good job after uni to make it all worth while.

We definitely spend less at home, it is odd (still got one dc at home). More eggs and oven chips type meals, fewer meals out, just because it is often just one or two of us now I guess. So fewer permutations [scratches head]?

So quite a bit of variation then!

I worked in a pub as a student (loved it), got a full grant and dole/housing benefit through the summer (plus a cash-in-hand job) and still ended up with an overdraft of about £2000

Me too Tilly. Those were the days.

I know. I honestly think the system is now so different that it is easier to understand as a graduate tax. It makes no sense at all compared with what used to happen (I got nothing from the state, worked every holiday but decided against post grad because of my debts - really shortsighted and silly decision, because of stuff that was going on at home we never sorted it properly.). I agree with PP that t would be really helpful if the govt said reckon on accommodation plus X. There are loads of estimates around but they sell seem as if pulled out of thin air and vary massively.

lasly it would be impossible for the Govt to do that though as there is so much variation to be factored in. for example ds1 rent for halls comes to £3600 a year in Cambridge where a) rent is actually very cheap and b) they have very short terms. DD1 on the other hand is considering Edinburgh uni. Preliminary research I have done suggests rent could be around £6-7000 a year and the terms are much longer so a massive difference in just rent alone. Then you need to consider eating habits, (catered V self catereing etc)social habits, hobbies,course costs etc which will obviously vary from student to student.
Also you have to then look at what you can actually afford. Currently I cant afford more then the £3600 I am giving ds. When dd goes to uni I am not sure how I will then find another £6000 on top of that. Potentially there could also then be one year where I had 3 dc at uni. No way I could find 15k that year to make up the difference between minimum and full loan!(although yes I am saving as much as possible already)

I think a good stating point is to get an idea of rents for halls/flats etc in areas your dc are looking at. Then work out food costs, other basic living costs (clothes, toiletries etc) , then course costs (will they need special equipment, text books, trips etc) add a bit of money for socialising . Add it all up and take away the amount of loan they would be entitled to then you have a rough idea of a starting point!

Yes, I agree really Saffron - but we did all that before dd started (she is in her third year now) and I am still not sure a) what we are doing and b) whether it is right! So would quite like to be told what to do . The universities don't help, filling campuses with expensive commercial outlets but showing you round the only catered hall. Grump grump.

I agree and it is not only income. I live in a area where, at least when we were making decisons, state secondary options were pretty bleak for all but the religious. We ended up paying, so supporting them through University means that we just continue to pay for the next few years. Luckily we are used to living relatively frugally.

However friends with similar incomes are not in the same position. They may have more DC than us, they may have interest only mortgages and need to repay capital, they may have poor pension provision, they may be worried about redundancy. They may well have calculated on using their last decade or so or earning to save for their own futures, only to discover the Government now wants them to contribute substantial amounts to their children's tertiary education. Living and raising children in London is so expensive. Means testing simply relies on current income so does not cover this.

So sorry DC, we will help get you through to the end, but no money for ensuites, alcohol or coffees out.

We give DS £1,000 a term, for living and this seems fine. The first year was supposedly catered though I think he lived exclusively on Pot Noodles. He now shares a flat, and they do a lot of communal cooking, and even early morning trips to Smithfield to buy meat in bulk. Most of his social life seems to be through societies, though this includes group trips to China Town and getting the Cantonese speaker to order off the secret low price student menu. No clubbing, though some of DS' friends at Imperial invade the weekly LSE disco as apparently it offers a good and cheap night out. He managed to land an internship last summer which meant he could afford to do a bit of travelling after. He has also picked up a bit of A level tutoring this term which pays well. One big surprise for us is how hard University students seem to work, far harder than in my day. And obviously the most time spent in the library, the less time for spending money.

Learning to live well and cheaply is a good skill if either DC stay on to work in London. Ditto learning to cope with fairly decrepit accommodation is probably not a bad thing.

Unfortunately for the work DS wants to do he almost certainly needs a Masters. Unlike Engineering where the Masters is routinely added onto the first degree and subject to the same fee structure, this does not happen in Economics. If he stays on at the LSE, the fees for the one year course are almost £26,000, though generously he would be offered a 10% alumni discount. Just as well he does not want to study Finance, where fees for the year are a whopping £32,880 for home students.

When does it end...

We are paying DD's fees and accommodation (she is studying medicine so will almost definitely end up paying it all back and we'd rather not pay for the privilege of borrowing money we don't need to).

In addition, we gave her the bank book for an account that I have been saving in since she was born - all the family allowance (when we got it), birthday and Christmas gifts and regular monthly saving by me, went into the account, so it has a very tidy sum in it. It is entirely up to her how she uses it - she could have an absolute ball and be out partying every night if she chose to - but so far she has been focusing on how cheaply she can shop for and is naturally very frugal. There should be plenty left over for her to buy a car if she ever gets round to passing her test!

We pay for her mobile phone contract - it was a birthday present - and I still give her a small monthly allowance (just didn't cancel the allowance that she had when at school).

DP put money aside to pay for the DSSs' HE many years ago. It covers most of their costs and the DSSs' mother also contributes. We don't want the DSSs to get into debt at university or to have to work for money during term time - we want them to max out on their studies. They understand this and they work very hard. Any spare time is used as they want - sport and societies, mostly.

lalsy ha! well I am brand new to all this, ds having only gone last weekend, so definitely don't know what I'm doing. I am naturally stubborn though so don't like being told what to do, so would not want the government to tell me how much I should be giving him!