Completing student finance application as a parent

[Alandel55]

My daughter is applying for student finance for 2025/26 and I am trying to complete the parents income part. Most is straightforward as I work for the NHS. However, I'm stuck on the Income from Savings and Investments. I'm struggling to easily find information for 2023/24. Does anyone know an easy way of getting this? Trailing through bank statements has also resulted in interest of less than £10. Do I really need to enter this small amount? Any help appreciated.

Are you on Facebook? There is a great group called 'WIWIKAU' - What I wished I knew about University'. I recommend you join that group. Its full of parents asking questions and getting lots of answers on everything to do with Uni. Right now lots of questions being asked about student finance and accommodation as its 'that time'. I am sure if you post there you will get the help you need.

Thank you for taking time to post this. I'll check out the group.

Good Luck with it. Student finance should in theory be straightforward but you would be surprised the amount of people that have questions about it and are confused about what information they need. Its a bit of a minefield!!

We have just done ours for our daughters 2nd year. Information exactly the same as last year so should have been really easy. But it wasn't. Had problems logging into our accounts and all sorts. Luckily we were dealing with Student Finance Wales which were easy to get hold of on the phone and really really helpful and it was all sorted quickly. But its pretty stressful!!

Hope you get the answers you need.

DD is starting in Sept but says we don't need to complete any forms as she is only applying for tuition fee loan and minimum maintanance loan as our joint income is over £35K. This doesn't seem right and I was waiting for her to get stuff back and correct it but she's sent in her forms and says it's all good. She has had a gap year and is an adult so am trying to not interfere but this doens't seem right - everyone else seems to be filling in forms. Can anyone advise?

If you are in England, the cut-off is more like £65,000. I don't know about the rest of the UK, though (just that they have separate systems).

Eta, just had a look at the info re funding from SAAS - are you in Scotland?

DS1 is applying through welsh finance and because both DH and I had student finance we just had to provide the log in details of that and they took all the info they needed from there.

@Fretfulagain Northern Ireland would be something similar. Our two only get the minimum and we don’t fill out the parents part. No point if you are sure you are over the limit.

That doesn’t sound right tbh. I earn about that and my son gets a bursary from the university based on my low earnings (though doesn’t get the full maintenance loan). I’m in England.

Thanks for all your replies. We live in England but DD is going to a Scottish Uni so that is an added complication (can't help wishing we lived in Scotland!) Joint earnings are over the threshold so maybe we don't need to do any form filling. Thanks again.

Funding comes from your home country, not based on where you are studying. So whether your DS is studying in England, Wales, NI or Scotland, if he and you are resident in England, the the relevant scheme for him to apply through is the one for SFE.

https://www.gov.uk/apply-online-for-student-finance

I couldn't even set up or reset my account. I've never had student finance myself but something on their system thinks I have.

I've had to upload my financial details and save it against my child's account. Heaven knows when they'll get back to me.

I'm glad my days of dealing with Student Finance are over, but once DD1 started uni and I scrabbled around trying to get the financial information together, I set up a spreadsheet which I updated every year. I listed any bank accounts which paid interest and any dividends I had from investments by the name of the company. This meant that when I was searching bank statements, I could scan for a particular name. I updated it every year so it was really easy to upload the information for the next financial year.

I declare all interest in my tax return, but no you are not paying tax on that £10 and its taxable income that are interested in.
@Fretfulagainthat is incorrect. As stated PP it’s where you live not where the student is going to uni. It’s a sliding scale. If over £65k then it’s the minimum but then it goes up the less you earn. So your YP could be entitled to significantly more.

We earn over the threshold so all we filled in was the basics - I think that’s right isn’t it? So she gets the tuition loan and the minimum maintenance loan of 4k or whatever it is - I didn’t have to submit anything else. I’m hoping that’s right!

This caused us no end of trouble doing the parent bit. Both DH and I had a student loan in its first year of being. Paid off in full 30 years ago. But because we'd had a record with a student loan, we couldn't set up a log in (because we'd set up our accounts pre internet, obviously) and had to send info as scanned attachments. Absolutely ridiculous. Also, with GDPR in mind, why have they still got our details if loan paid off a year after we graduated in the mid 90s??

Yes, that's correct - your DC (the actual applicant) just ignores the 'I want to borrow as much as I can' box, or whatever it is that triggers the request for your contact details. If they tick it anyway (DD did this, even though we'd already said that there was no point), you will get an email asking you to confirm that you are supporting your DC's application and give your financial details (at least, that is what happened with us), but if you just ignore that, after a couple of weeks the assessment will just go ahead for the minimum maintenance loan.