I have some questions about university if anyone can help?

[mouldyjam]

I have two children, both bright and capable students, currently year 11 and 8.
I didn't go to university and neither did my husband. Both could have but no support from family, life events etc
I want them to be able to go to university if they want to. Do people put money aside for this? How much does it actually cost from the parents? Like do you pay rent ? Bills? For the course? If you don't how do they find it and do most children's parents pay for university? Are different universities more expensive?
We are not high earners, between us we earn about £45,000 but we have low mortgage payments so can save a little bit if necessary I think.
Thank you for any wise words

www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loan-parental-contribution-tool/guide/?_ga=2.125375114.1099239939.1628621231-1481291360.1628621231

Martin Lewis does some good articles like the above.

University fees are £9,250 at most (all?) universities, this is covered by loans.

Maintenance loans are different, they are assessed on income and someone, usually parents, needs to make up the difference. Students can get a part time job if lucky too.

The UCAS site is really good for answering lots of questions - maybe look there and it may help?

www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loan-parental-contribution-tool/

A calculator to work out parental contribution.

We pay the accommodation & our kids have lived off the (minimum) maintenance loan (& 2 have had jobs). The accommodation costs somewhere between £5000-7000 per year. The course fees are part of the loan but they never see that, it goes straight to the uni.

This varies and the amount per month will vary from 0 to 100s. The thing to note is the maintenance loan is reduced according to household income with the assumption that parents will make up the difference. Martin Lewis has very good advice for this. My DCs take all available loans and we top up the maintenance to the maximum loan amount and probably an extra £1000 each. Some parents pay upfront the accommodation and their dc use the maintenance for living cost. We have chosen to give them money each week term time only. They both work in holidays but not term time. But it’s a good idea to save.

There are some very good summer schools available to children whose parents did not go to university - summer.

This could give them a taster of what it is like?

Your first advantage is, if they go straight from school and do a 3 yr degree, your eldest will finish before your younger one starts.
When student finance calculate how much your student can borrow, they take into account household income, but not what is going out of your budget.

In principle, every student ought to be able manage on a full loan. If your household income means the student doesn't get the full loan, there is an expectation that parents top it up to the full loan, and, in theory it is calculated you could do that out of your income. If your mortgage isn't huge and you don't have other debts, then it is generally manageable.

It never hurts to have money put aside, and there are times when you need to let them have an advance (deposits for rent usually), but the weekly / monthly bills should be manageable on the loan they get, as long as you have taught them how to budget and that they understand things like not having an en-suite room means they get an extra £40-£50 in their pocket each week, and shopping at Aldi rather than Waitrose means they have more money left for socialising.

DD commuted to Uni while living at home and also had a part time job so had plenty of money to live off with the maintenance loan as well (and we didn’t charge her board)!

It was about an hour and a half journey each way but generally they only go in 3 days a week and they only have approx 2 x 12 week terms where they go in for lectures, with about a month off at Christmas and then finish around May, so very doable.

We couldn’t afford to shell out £8 in accommodation (4 DC) and she didn’t want to share accommodation with people she might not get on with anyway.

She got some experience of living independently by working abroad in the summer holidays.

DS will be going to a different Uni in September with a similar commute so will do the same but is hoping to save up (when he can get a part time job) to be able to do a flat share in his 2nd year but his Uni is in central London and it is very expensive so we’ll see.

They both got free railcards with a student bank account to cut down travel costs.

We live within an area where there are quite a few choices of Unis which are commutable.

The accommodation costs these days are ridiculous compared to when I went to Uni so I prefer they live at home and put spare money into driving lessons, getting a car, etc, and live comfortably with family support.

DD didn’t suffer too much from not living in halls. She did plenty of drinking and partying anyway!

At that level of income, in terms of annual maintenance loan you'd get a bit more than we do (which is around £5500).

DD uses her ML to pay her halls rent (which leaves her with around £10 spare per week. We give her another £80 / week for going out / food / clothes. She manages with this as she has a supermarket job in the holidays and saves quite a bit when she's at home.

It's quite a cheap university for accommodation and private rentals, and this is something to think about when applying. London is particularly expensive, but other places like Bristol and Exeter are more expensive than northern cities which tend to have cheaper rents. Have a look on the Uni website and on zoopla to get an idea of where might be more affordable. Think too of travel costs.

Course fees are taken care of with loans for everyone. Fees are the same £9250 / year almost everywhere in England, £9k in Wales. Scotland is much cheaper / free if you're a Scottish student attending a Scottish university (otherwise the same as England I think?)

This is a really good breakdown of it all on MoneySavingExpert blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2016/09/how-much-are-parents-supposed-to-give-their-children-when-they-go-to-university/

Ds1 is going this September, he can only get £4422 in a maintenance loan due to our household income being above the maximum amount. The full loan he could get if we earned below £25k would be £9488 suggesting that our parental contribution be £5066 per year for our son. This is based on living away from home and outside London for university.

Now of course each student will spend different amounts of money, Ds is in self catered accommodation on campus for first year which costs £6k. Therefore he still needs to pay for food, any books/resources, clothes, socialising etc.

They can for lots of courses get part time jobs, live at home, take a gap year and put money aside. I genuinely think this information should be given to parents when their children start secondary school to allow time to save if possible.

Student bank accounts offer interest free (whilst a student) overdrafts of around £1k per year meaning they can access money that way. I know you are probably reeling from this information and I don't blame you. Both Dh and I went to university so we knew that this would cost us and have savings.

Oh this is all really helpful, thank you!

Also, if they want to do a healthcare course (eg nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy, occupational therapy), they get a bursary of £5k a year. This means that even with the minimum loan, parents don’t have to top up much, if at all.

If you are in England, you can use this calculator: www.gov.uk/student-finance-calculator.
The salary cut off is really quite low, so saving in advance to help make up the maintenance loan is never a bad idea.