Household income threshold and other questions

[Jessie3]

Trying to get my head around all this - ds applied for the minimum maintenance back at the beginning of this year, just to get him in the system. He has now decided to go, which is fine.

1. Our income is 66 grand-ish, is there any point on re-applying and submitting our income? We are worried it will mess up the basic application if we bung it back into the system, and is there any point if he’s only going to get the basic anyway, or is our income too high for anything else?

2. His accommodation fees are 7 odd grand 🙄🙄 - if we pay that, is it unreasonable to expect him to live off the loan or would you top your dc up? And by how much?

Thanks in advance. We are ready for accommodation costs but only because I took on a second evening job, which ironically may have pushed us over any threshold. Any help massively appreciated!

No point in reporting salary.

Most people pay accommodation and they live off minimum loan.

I gave my DC an emergency fund of a few grand.

If your DC is in halls the first year you maybe able to spread the cost on a 0% credit card.

Dc have lived off the loan and we paid accommodation.

Most people pay accommodation and they live off minimum loan.

Not most people I know. £7k or more would be a lot of money for a lot of people to find over a year. A lot of students I know (of) have the loan (min or a bit more) and some top-ups from parents and then get a job.

The max loan is about £9.7k, so a good deal more than £7k accomm plus min loan of £4.7k. I think it's reasonable to allow the max loan in total.

£66k is maybe just too much to get nmore than the min loan @Jessie3 but it's easy to check.

Edit to add: so basically if you are happy to pay the accomm costs, min loan of £4.7k is more than enough IMO.

Assuming you are in England no point submitting he gets minimum loan.
We are doing we pay accommodation (£6000) and her live off min loan. It’s £117 a week over 40 weeks. She has some savings from pt job.
We do pay her phone and contact lenses. I may also pay gym as her uni is a separate fee a year wheras others were in with halls price I’d have paid.
I’ve also bought her supplies of food/toiletries to take which will help.

Brilliant, thanks all - really helpful.

Our DC don't have loans so we give them £1100 a month

Max loan outside London is £10,227 from SFE so we are required to top up £5500.
Her accommodation is £6000 so we have decided to just pay that.

Most people pay accommodation and they live off minimum loan.

I disagree with this too! DS has always had an ensuite and been catered, no way am I paying all that and leaving all the maintenance loan for beer money!

I top up the maintenance loan he receives to the maximum. It's then up to him how he balances accomodation costs v spending money. For me, this is by far a better strategy than the 'pay accommodation' suggestion.

Depends where they are living. Ds got just above minimum loan, and we were on about that. don't forget if you pay pension it's not counted as taxable income. Might be worth asking on their chat system what to do. He used his to pay his accomodation we sent 260 a month while he was away, and paid his phone. Plus started him off each term with a big shop. He had a holiday job and just graduated from Liverpool with no debt apart from the student loan. He can budget an aldi shop like a pro!