Probably a dumb question - but where do you find the money from to support your student DC?

[Wowzers71]

Hi

Eldest DD is 17 and will likely be heading to uni in Autumn 2023 (assuming she doesn't stuff up her exams). I'm only now starting to get my head round how the finances of this might work. DH and I earn over £65k a year so DD would only get the minimum loan, and having had a wee look on several threads about money on here it sounds like many of you are paying around £600 a month on accommodation for your DC. That seems like a lot of money!
So how do you afford it? Are we just rubbish with money? I just can't think that we will be able to drop £600 a month without really tightening our belts. And we've got a younger DD too, so there's no way I'd be able to support them both. Am I missing something? Or should I brace myself for "the porridge years...."?

I have a part time job that I pay straight to ds2. It’s only just over £300 a month but it all helps. I couldn’t afford to help him out out of my salary from my main job.
he works as well and the £300 just means he can eat properly and have the odd night out whereas on his wages alone he’d have to live on beans on toast and care packages from
home.
my mum will send him money a few times a year as well just to help out the same way she did with ds1.

ds1’s degree was funded as part of an apprenticeship so he had course fees and accommodation paid plus a small apprenticeship wage.

I will put the same away for ds3 (ds2 is disabled and won't live independently).

He is unlikely to go to Uni but he can use to money to travel, pay to learn a trade/support himself through an apprenticeship and anything else he fancies doing.

I think what tends to be forgotten by people is that decisions about university are made by the student not the parents. Yet it is the parents who are expected to pay and their income which is scrutinised. To be made financially responsible for another adult is not something that happens in many other scenarios (if any?) so it is not surprising that it comes as a shock to some parents.
No one would expect them to pay over hundreds of pounds monthly if their (non student)adult child decided to not work and not pay their rent and insisted their parents pay for them until their mid to late twenties. People would be horrified and call the adult child a parasite and consider the parents to be very hard done by.
Why therefore have we this ludicrous system of infantilising adult students?

@Takeittotheboss, yes you make a very salient point!

The system sucks in its current form. Everyone should be entitled to the same loan.

We are not at that stage yet as eldest dc is in year 7, but have decided against moving house recently so that our mortgage should be cleared when dc1 is at the end of year 12/start of year 13. Plan is to keep other spending the same and then use the money we've been budgeting for the mortgage to help dc1 and then dc2 for uni if thats what they want to do.

@Takeittotheboss @LouisCatorze
You are completely out of touch! Students have been required to apply for maintenance grants (if they need them) from the early 1960s. Since that time parents have been involved regarding finance. That is 60 years!!! It is not new and people just put their heads in the sand. Parents who earned over a base line amount were asked to make a contribution on a sliding scale. Plenty of parents pay in the USA. Their DC are adults too. This is all about planning and family discussions. Few DC suddenly announce they want to go to university. Most parents have some inkling that DC are bright enough much earlier than y13!

We only realised that our ds might make it to university in Year 12 after he left school and started a Btec course.

Some parents university just isn;t on their radar at all.

@TizerorFizz I wasn't disputing that some parents have been contributing something towards their offspring at university for years.
More the fundamental point that it is not something that happens in any other area of life....where one adult gets to decide and live their life but based on other adults' income.
It is not correct for either party involved. Adult student is infantilised and dependent, adult parent is financially pressured by someone else's choices.

And maybe it has been the case for a long time, but it doesn't mean parents who have no prior knowledge or experience of the system would know about this. Especially not many years previous when finances/savings have to be put in place for a moveable feast of student expenses.

@TizerorFizz Also, just because something has been in place for a number of years doesn't mean it is fair or doesn't need review. Indeed, we all know that arrangements over student expenditure have been adjusted many times over the past 60 years. Unfortunately, mainly by removing the fundamental issue of adult fiscal autonomy.
The argument that the US has this type of flawed system too, doesn't mean that we can't consider different arrangements. As far as I know, we are not a satellite state of the US!

I didn’t say we were but many university systems ask parents to pay for maintenance if DC live away from home. Out of interest where is free? Where do parents not pay for food and rent? As my DD studied in Switzerland and Italy I didn’t see the Swiss parents not paying for accommodation and food and the Italians live at home in the main. But they have no world class universities. Just very old ones. So parents pay, in effect, for DC to stay at home.

Fees are a different matter and are not parent assessed. How else could we send 450,000 pa to university? Rich parents pay nothing maybe? Who decides? Make everyone borrow £10,000 pa? Why is that a good idea? Someone has to pay for a university education. It’s too big right now and needs culling but it’s not compulsory to go.

I'm an American with a 20 year old and a 22 year old, both attending private universities in the US. The 22 year old will graduate in a few weeks, thankfully.

I think that families here understand that even state universities have fees and that while there are scholarships, grants, and government loans available, saving what you can give you more options. There is a tax-advantaged account that you can open and save in specifically for higher education expenses.

www.savingforcollege.com/intro-to-529s/what-is-a-529-plan

If you start early and invest in a mix that contains stocks and bonds your earnings come out tax-free and most states give you a tax deduction for your contributions. This is how we are financing it all for our kids. Both will graduate debt free.

I hope it will be OK. I was aware from when they were small and we saved into their CTF even though we're on a pretty low income. I've got health conditions and on PIP / ESA.

We're around 25K in total income, so DS should get the full loan which should be Ok if he's away from home, he will also have the CTF which is 15K now, and if at home will be able to have up to the around 8K per year which is the rate for living at home.

He also has a summer job which he could do some of in the winter if needed.

It's a bit of a worry though but was aware of it and also having been through uni myself in the 90s was aware of e.g. parental contributions etc.

Maybe because DD's school had a 6th form the idea of going to university was always onthe radar.

Besides, it seems to be expected these days. I don't know ow many young people who haven't been in some kind of higher education.

A quick google says only 38% go onto uni so not most at all.

I thought it was around 50% nowadays?

It's 90% of sixth form pupils in our school so plenty of time to be aware if they are entering sixth form...

I've set up a savings account which will belong to him when he turns 18. Hoping that'll cover anything loan and grant dont for at least the first year.

I guess it is because the DC of most of my friends are at or have been to university, and all of DD's friends bar one are or have been students. Nearly everyone she was at 6th form with went to university as well.

Most schools here don’t have 6th forms but the ones that do offer a mixture of A levels, Btecs and Work Skills courses. It’s very common for young people to enter the job market after 6th form, if indeed they choose to stay on.

Bucking the trend of the high-earning, super-saving, forward-planners on here... DS1 is at uni by the seat of our financial pants. As I'd been widowed for 9 years by the time DS enrolled at uni, I had lived almost a decade on very little month to month, with no savings. Zero zilch.
So DS has qualified for full maintenance plus £5K bursary p.a for nursing. He lives at home and is proud to contribute a little to the household.
I imagine some will be horrified by my taking money FROM a student- but then you've probably never been relentlessly poor from being a (true) single parent.

Our children are still very young but we have 2 savings pots for each of them; one for university and one for a house deposit. We are very lucky to have a high income so can afford this comfortably.

We plan to buy the 3 of them their first cars, insurance etc from disposable income at the time.

I didn’t go to uni and neither did anyone I know so I just assumed they laid for it all themselves with loans, bursaries and a part time job? Do people not do that anymore?

It's just below that in Scotland.

When I went to uni it was 18%! It's just a business now, and sadly lots of kids go unnecessarily or drop out.

The maximum loan 'living-at-home' students get always seems generous considering the average 'halls' accommodation is likely to be well in excess (up to three times as much) of the extra £2.5K that students living away from home receive if they're not in London. Are there many home 'domiciled students who pay a going market rent rate to their parents?

Not all 17 and 18 year olds have the maturity or wherewithal to sort absolutely everything for themselves without support. Also, parents have to complete some Student Finance forms with their income details so that the student has access to a higher maintenance loan. If parents refuse to complete this information the student only gets the minimum amount, which doesn't even cover the cost of accommodation.