Going to university (2019/20 academic year) - finance, flat shares, friends old and new and freshers' week to come...

[NewModelArmyMayhem18]

Following on from thread 8 which filled up in just 72 hours.

To the pp asking about single mumps vaccinations, afaik single mumps vaccine isn't available in the UK - unless anyone else has come across it privately? I don't know whether any GP surgeries do a 3rd MMR on the NHS for students - I think generally not, although, as a number of pp have said, there do seem to have been a number of mumps outbreaks amongst students.

I've concluded from my Google searaqching, that one isn't available. As the mumps part is only ever about 80% effective, I don't know if having a booster would make any difference anyway ( but I have no medical knowledge about this!).

DD went for her asthma medication review and asked the practice nurse practitioner about the jabs, so she was able to call it up there and then on the computer and tell DD all was covered already.

She's done a load of admin today. Submitted her direct debit mandate to the uni. for accommodation payments. Checked student finance has her student acc details for paying into. Uploaded photos and needs to send a photo of her passport as proof of residence.

She has checked on her maintenance payment schedule. She will have wildly different amounts left after paying for her accommodation each term. She gets the very generous Welsh grant/loan amount of £9225 (£1330 she does not need to repay) but due to differing accommodation costs, she'll only have £700ish to get by on in the Autumn term compared to £1400 and £1500 in the spring and summer terms. Which is why I'm subbing her the cost of the meals in advance weekly catering offer to ease her into things, and to lessen what she needs to buy from her £700. Compared to the shortfall that a lot of English parents are having to make up, we're very grateful for the more generous system - although it does mean she will have a lot more debt in 3 years.

Ah - Fozzley, it was you asking about the single MMR! This page from Oxford University says that single mumps isn't manufactured any more.
vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vk/mmr-vaccine

Thanks again Sooner!

@DrMadelineMaxwell how did she do this holiday or is she saying for next year? My DS was the same but did sod all this summer :)

DW and I had a fun little moment washing the kitchen set from Argos (the cheap £20 one that was mentioned earlier in the thread). Wok is paper thin and the cutlery has pretty cheap plastic handles. DW said it reminded her of the cheap pans and cutlery we got in our first basement flat together and she’s right - we have decent stuff now but back then it was cheap and cheerful

@DrMadelineMaxwell how does direct debit work for accommodation? Can’t imagine it being neat. Eg they’ll want possibly different amounts for the different length terms, then the actual loan will be different (probably not matching) amounts, and on odd days that may not properly line up with when they’re needed. I could see it yoyoing the bank balance wildly. I’d almost prefer just to get a bill, we pay it, then DS transfers i]the mainlanders back to us whenever it arrives

Her job was advertised as 'casual' and we weren't sure how much work she'd get. She averaged out 12 hours a week since June, with a little more recently. And is doing 40 hours next week while the owner is away on holiday. So, because she spends very little socialising etc, it's putting a fair few quid in the bank for her towards her first term.

We got the £20 set (and possible were the ones that posted it on here). It's good enough for getting her started, esp as she's having 5 main meals a week catered. :)

It suggests a direct debit mandate (York) but I imagine they then just use it to make the 3 payments. They are very different amounts (£2300, £1400, £1900) so it won't be a set monthly amount.

DrMadelineMaxwell re: the maintenance loan, do the repayments of the loan work the same as in England? We used the moneysavingexpert student loan calculator and worked out that DD is unlikely to end up repaying any of her maintenance loan. There's loads of assumptions on that calculator but it's quite interesting, you can use the sliders to change the values and see how that affects your total repayment. Probably makes a difference that DDs course is 4 years.

@JennyWreny how have you worked that out? Ah if you start at £25k initial wage, the amount paid back over 30 years is less than even the tuition fee?

@DrMadelineMaxwell I get that - i’d Just be worried the amounts and dates will vary just enough to make it a mess having it set up to withdraw automatically

Yes, in that sense it is not really a normal a debt - just 9% of what you earn over £25k so whether you owe £60k or £6k you repay the same (although my sons who are already at university don't have student loans - I am paying for fee and maintenance elements). Had my London lawyer daughters had student loans they probably would have paid back a fair bit so it does depend on what job you are likely to pick. 100k - 25k x 9% is 6750 a year. £20k earned a year = zero ever repaid.

Re mumps/MMR - after being fobbed off by the GP receptionist, I enquired at a local pharmacy (who do travel vaccinations). The pharmacist kindly made some enquiries. Apparently there is no ban on having a third MMR (from a medical POV) though you would have to pay privately. He was not overly enthusiastic about it as it is a live vaccine & I’m sure he thought I was a paranoid mother. He was adamant that my friend’s son (who caught mumps last year) must have only had one dose as a child. Which afaik is not correct...

Decorhate the Oxford university website says:
"After two doses of MMR vaccine, about 99 of people out of 100 will be protected against measles, about 88 out of 100 will be protected against mumps, and almost everyone will be protected against rubella."

Did the pharmacist say why its being a live vaccine made him not very enthusiastic?

@MrKlaw Yes, amount repaid is the same on that calculator unless I move the sliders to say she has graduate starting salary of £40k! Probably makes a difference her being on the 4 year course though and as Xenia points out, if you end up with a very well paid job then you'd probably end up paying more back. Also of note is that the calculator doesn't let you pick 2019 as the start date so I wonder what difference that makes. It does say somewhere they are in the process of updating it with correct figures.

With York iirc they want the payment for accommodation by the end of the month at each term start. So there should be a few weeks between her money going in and it going out again.

Dd may well use her student acc for just managing her accommodation money and funnel what she has left to live on into her other account to start with so that she can immediately separate it out and see what she needs to budget with.
Plus it gives her a 2nd card to keep.safe with some funds in case she loses her first card or gets it stolen..

On the subject of the MMR jabs, I think the whole Andrew Wakefield scandal blew up just before our DC were born, so the anti-vaxxers were already on a roll. Some in the cohort won't have had any MMR vaccines because of parental concern - certainly the case in our friendship group. So those getting it at university may not have had the jabs at all!

by getting it I mean mumps, measles...

@DrMadelineMaxwell it’s the separation I was worried about - having maintenance loan in the same account as living expenses for a few weeks could be risky. I like the idea of the student account for accommodation and then a regular account for living exp. (or the other way round)

Morning all.
A little story that maybe interesting or not !
I had ( and I imagine quite a few of us on here) my Rubella jab at 12 at school.

10 years later I got German Measles!
It was confirmed by a GP who wanted me to take a pregnancy test .(it would have been an Immaculate Conception if it was positive !)

I was with my friend alot and she had to delay her son's MMR due to being in contact with me .

So not sure what the point of posting all that .
Maybe the single vacs were /are different.

I am trying to distract myself from all this talk of money !!

Re MMR- As I understand it, in this generation of students, a proportion did not have the vaccine owing to Wakefield- related concerns at the time. This has led to herd immunuty being impaired, so the unvaccinated have been getting mumps. As the mumps vaccine is only about 80% effective anyway (the lowest level of effectiveness of the 3 vaccines in MMR), about 20% of vaccinated students who were exposed to others with mumps, were catching it.

I suppose the salient question is, if you can get a single booster before going to university, would it remedy a deficiency if you are one of the 20% for whom the previous 2 doses of MMR had not provided immunity from mumps? Is the 20% failure rate down to the individual or the vaccine?

I have no medical knowledge, I haven't a clue! DS's university had an outbreak earlier this year, so I have a particular interest. We have a very good private gp service locally, so I'll call them and ask and will update.

Rubella jab does wear off over time. I know dsis was counted immune when she was pregnant the first time, and not immune the last time. There was less than 5 years between them.

Is there an actual increase in risk? Wouldn’t that same risk have been in palace with all the children your kids have been in contact with during their normal school time, and in the general population?

Going to university = a much larger group of potentially unvaccinated young people than our DC would generally have come into contact with @MrKlaw. Sure that would make a difference? I stand to be corrected though.

FWIW DS (who had all the childhood vaccinations offered at the time, including pre-school booster) had primary school friends who got mumps even though they'd had privately given single vaccine against it.