Students and finances / parents helping out??

[Monica53]

Hi there
Just wondering how everyone’s student kids manage with finances and surviving. Our Dd is stressing as has by sounds overspent and gets max maintenance loan(this year her second yr anyway). Looking for rental for next year again and stressing as in her OD ! I’ve explained she isn’t alone. Just interested as how everyone else manages or not as case maybe . Thank you 😊

I’m sorry.

@JunoTurner can I ask - if you’re aware that this is a personal bugbear of yours which you’re perfectly entitled to hold etc etc, why do you seem to be making it a bit of a personal attack against needmoresleep?

@HostessTrolley I replied to the points made by Needmoresleep because she responded to me. That’s a response, not a personal attack.

We paid for accommodation. The student loan paid for the rest & DS is now gradually paying the loan off.

@JunoTurner

Yes it is common parlance, dictionary definitions even refer to it being a term to describe medical students. For me though, since it does have several meanings (and a different one in the US to here), it’s a cringey choice to use when describing your child. Different from students using it amongst themselves as shorthand to differentiate subjects. My DSS who is a medical student would hate his parents or I to use it as he says it’s so misleading and boastful, and his ‘medic’ friends feel the same.

Really? The medical students my dc know all refer to themselves as medics!

University sport is really expensive. You need membership, to join a gym and then the kit....including a blazer.

This ^ is NOT common.
I suspect your dc must go to a rather unusual University.

Looking around 5 - 7 Universities for each of my 3 dc, Societies and sports teams varied, but I never came across ANY University where people needed a University Blazer, not since 1949 when my Mum went.
I am 100% not saying it hasn't happened in your case, but it really is NOT typical.

My dd that has just graduated, was lucky enough to attend a University where ALL the clubs and Teams are free. She didn't even have to pay for transport to get there. She was training or playing 4 times a week for her Team.

DSS thinks there’s a difference between them calling themselves medics in university world and their parents doing so out in the real world. I agree with him. Maybe I’m being pedantic but particularly with Covid, it doesn’t sit right with me up call him or any other undergrad medical student a medic because it suggests someone who is a medical professional (so fully qualified). There’s been a lot of talk this year about medics. You’ll see on MN threads asking medics for advice. They mean professionals, not students.

And as a parent, admittedly a step one, it would sound boastful and self-important to refer to DSS as a medic when he was a first year student. Very different from him and his students and uni staff using it as shorthand to describe themselves.

Law students for example would be very careful not to refer to themselves as lawyers in the real world because lawyer is a defined term by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, and it’s against the law society rules, including for student members, to use it when you’re not legally qualified. I’m a lawyer so that’s where I’m coming from

You’ll see on MN threads asking medics for advice. They mean professionals, not students

You don't think MNers can work that one out?

Backforgood. Yes...a blazer and other kit for a mainstream BUCS sport and a mainstream university. . Plus a required gym membership and costs. It added up to quite a lot.

Glad to hear that is not the case everywhere. I assume it might relate to SU prioritisation.

No need to be so aggressive Titchy. Or to do three consecutive posts replying to my one.

I didn’t say ‘lawyer’ was a protected term, I said lawyer was a term defined by the SRA. They strongly advise against their members using it unless you are qualified in a certain way. Here’s the link to their glossary, look under L:
www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/standards-regulations/glossary/

Doctor, nurse, solicitor and barrister are protected terms. As I think we all know lawyer is not nor is paralegal etc. My parents always referred to "meduical students". I would not personally use the word medic for them. My father was a medical student when he married my mother. Same with my sibling who is a doctor - as a medical student I would never have called that sibling a doctor or medic. However language does change. Sadly it sometimes changes for the worse eg we all used to know what a "writ" is - used to start a court claim and "plaintiff" the person suing., Now we have "claim" and "claimant" in England but not USA which in my view is less clear as they are more general words.

The lawyer issue is very relevant . The other word people use is legal consultant which you can also use whoever you are (as only solicitor and barrister are protected and reserved for those who have qualified). The other danger area is therapists and counsellors who don't need any qualifications to use those words. Obviously s June makes clear above if you engage in misleading advertising that is not lawful.

Paralegals I think can be any tom dick or harry.

My doctor daughter and all her doctor friends refer to themselves as medics. They referred to themselves as medics throughout medical school too as their needs and the intensity of the course differentiates them from other students.

So very different to veterinary students?

Engineer isn’t a protected status. It doesn’t matter whatever students are called. We all know what they mean in student terms.

I think Clifton basic rents can be cheaper than £138 a week. There are cheaper areas not so far away from Clifton. It’s a case of looking around where your budget will stretch to and not exceeding it. I think Bristol posters were saying a couple of years ago that White Ladies Road was cheaper and just right for the less well off student.

I agree rents do vary around Bristol. My son is sharing with only one other person near the centre this year and the rent is about £630 each. I am sure you can get cheaper places.

The whole system assumes you will help support your child now. If my youngest goes to university and doesn't live at home I'm assuming we'll have to support him with a few hundred pounds a month. It will not be easy.

I do think many parents whose DC get the full loan don’t think they need to pay anything. In reality, at some universities, this is difficult for the students to manage unless they really really cut back on expenditure. So parents need to think about this years in advance and try and plan. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the max loan is difficult to manage for a student.

Of course many parents who went to university themselves didn’t have any contributions from parents. My family members didn’t get 1p. Neither did they need it. Parents don’t always realise times have changed and costs have increased. So talking about money, and management of money, is extremely important where little is available from parents. I do think at least the cost of DC being at home should be handed over though. Just because the student being away is a saving for parents every month. It shows willing!

What’s not being commented on here is that the OP’s daughter is in her 2nd year and is struggling with budgeting now, during Covid. This isn’t a fresher adjusting to independent living. If the budgeting problems only came up this year, then the starting point has to be what’s different between 1st year and now. The DD’s bursary being reduced may obviously be a factor.

I think from memory the parent here gave more help in year 1.

When I went I only got a tiny minimum grant (I graduated in 1982) and only 15% of people went to university at all (so most people did not get a university education rather than this myth that it was free for "all" in the past). My parents made it up to the full grant to cover my rent but as with parents now there was no legal obligation on them to do so.

The parents didn’t help more in year 1 (at least not going by what OP has said) but as I mentioned, the DD did/does get a small bursary which was reduced after the OP got a small salary rise.

I don't know if OP's DD had a similar schedule to mine. In the pre-Covid days mine started her second year before other students, as they had had a three week pre-sessional exercise. (I don't know if others did similar but DD and her group tracked a specific illness through diagnosis and medical and community support, with a requirement to read up and write about it.) It was a valuable exercise but made for a very long term. Start off with an overdraft and you could be pretty broke by the end.

I agree the numbers going to university were small but people going felt it was free. Lots of parents never coughed up 1p. I used to manage awards and grants at my CC - so I do know!

It is different now and that's what is important for parents to understand. From y1 to y2, the difference is moving out of halls of residence into private rented and the bursary reduction. So this is where costs/payments from parents have to be aligned.

City centre Bristol is often more expensive than further out away from the university but still within a bus ride of the university. City centre rents, usually, are priced at the young professional market, not necessarily students. Hence the difference in price. Often nicer properties too. Not so studenty.

I found my uncle's Durham university bill for year 1 in 1936 which was in today's money £89000 (same as now) which his father could afford but when my further went nearly 10 years later his father was nearly 70 and retired so he had to read physics first and could only do medicine after as grants came out after WWII and also he married my mother who worked full time as a teacher for over 10 years putting off babies so they could afford to live.

For the 15% who went to university when I went only those whose parents did not have much money would have felt it was free. I had no fees but my minimum grant was only £117, £117 and £110 (for the 3 terms when I started) so £335 a year which is £1707 today allowing for inflation and parents were expected but not obliged to make it up to the full grant.