How much do I need to save to send ds to uni?

[thatlldopig1]

I have 12 years to save for ds to go to uni. He may not want to go in which case he can use money for something else but I need to make sure I've saved enough if he does

Parents with kids at uni.. How much will I need ?

Im watching with interest, i had no support to go to university, but then i also qualified for more loan and there were lower fees then.

My daughter has just finished her 3 years at Uni. I didn't save anything to send her. All her friends got jobs and supported themselves.

It depends how much help you want to give him. For him to leave with no debt, you're looking at:

3 x £10,000 for fees as it is now
3 x £8000 accommodation assuming a fairly big city not London
3 x £8000 annual living expenses to include food, activities, going out, clothes, phone, internet, bills. Based on around £800/month for 9 months of the year.

I recon you need to save at least £80,000 to be able to afford to pay for everything and to do it properly, with him away from home.

I went to university 10 years ago and it was a lot cheaper. I left with no debt as I worked for a year before my course to pay my accommodation up front (£4500 per year) and then worked through my course doing caring so I worked all hours under the sun without impacting my uni work. I also didn't have to pay fees.

It depends on whether you want them to come out debt free and whether they would be entitled to the full loan. If you want them debt free then you need about 18k per year of study.

you could save money for him generally.
however much you can afford.

£800 a month food and fun money!? That's more than we have for a family of 5!

12 years is a long time and a lot can change. Also living costs vary hugely from one uni to another - and it's not as simple as north/south, especially for first years in Uni halls. But for scale XDH and I gave DD £400 per month (she left this time last year) between us while she was at uni, which was on the generous side.

Nothing...

He can get a loan and a job.

If you’re income is low, your child will get a maintenance loan and a loan for fees. Or there is the option of getting a job. Many of my daughters friends got huge help as from low income families. She struggled through with a lot of help from us, much worse off than them.

Huh?

You don’t need to save!

His loan will cover fees and accommodation.

For living expenses he can get a job- the uni year is short and there aren’t many teaching hours in most subjects.

I have a DD who has done two years at York and she has the full maintenance loan and a bursary for the second year as i wasn't working the year before. I don't think she's used much of her maintenance loan at all. It's about £9k a year for tuition, £8k for maintenance and £2k if you qualify for a bursary. She's done a couple of short term jobs but she's in Hungary now and buys loads of clothes so it seems fine.

But who knows what it'll be like in 12 years.

In case that wasn't clear, I don't give her anything!

No one knows what the situation will be in 12 years.

It will also depend on where they go and what they study - some degrees leave little time for work, others more, some campuses are far removed from employment opportunities, others in cities.

I'm putting away the child benefit in an account in my daughters name - should have about £20,000 by uni time.

If the situation stays as it is I'd encourage her to still get whatever loan she can (at the moment would be fees plus about £3,200 maintenance, which I doubt even covers rent) and use what we've saved to top up so a part time job is optional rather than required.

I worked part time at uni (15 years ago) but still needed a bit of parental help to be able to have a social life, this was under what was expected based on my loan being assessed in their income. If my DB had gone too my parents wouldn't have been able to support us both.

I'd save whatever you can, maybe keep back any extra if you think they'd blow it when the time comes.

DD is at Uni now, DS will go next year.

OP if you are in the fortunate position to have disposable income to save for your children's education, all well and good. Average debt on graduation is in the region of £44k now.

But I think you are missing something. Young people who decide to make the decision to go to Uni are adults. And they have to weigh up the pros and cons, and take responsibility for their decision and supporting themselves. It's called growing up.

How will your children learn these important life skills if you just stump up the cash?

I haven't made a regular commitment to give DD money, but I help when I can - £20 here and there, occasional food shop, top up her Uber account, buy extra toiletries when I do my shop and save for her, those kind of things. But she's worked her butt off this summer to save money for next year.

His loan will cover fees and accommodation

Not necessarily. If you are a mid income family then the loan will not cover accommodation. And some uni courses do not allow you to work.

On top of full loan, actually I think it was just under the full loan, my dad gave my sister an extra £30 a week for food or whatever. She never went out though.

Loans do not cover accomodation for many students!!!

We had put aside what we thought was a reasonable amount for dd from an inheritance when she was little. They then tripled the fees and accomodation prices shot up. It doesn't even touch the sides now.

I would make sure you have a pension yourself (I may have failed in this) and rainy day savings then see what you can afford to put aside after that. Check interest rates regularly. We may have failed in that too.

It's impossible to know what future governments will do or what will happen to the economy, so rather than trying to guess, just be prudent and hopefully you'll be in a position of at least being able to help out if needed.

If it's not needed and they don't need it for a deposit, then at least you've saved a decent lump sum anyway.

My youngest has just graduated and in all three cases, the loan was nowhere near enough to cover accommodation, never mind food etc.

In theory a part time job would help but two of them did an arts based degree which involved a huge amount of course work (architecture needed regular 12 hour days in the studio just to keep up). The other did nursing....50 % practical , minimal holidays.

So they took out loans for fees and living expenses and we paid for accommodation for each of them. Those figures would be easy to check and allow for inflation e.g. £5000 per year per child.

We plan to give our dds £500 pcm each and the rest will need to be covered by loans and pt jobs.

I didn't save anything. I gave them some money for food each month when they were there and they both got jobs very early in their first year and worked their way through. One worked nearly full time hours in a pub. Both now earn more than I ever will and have bought their own homes in their 20's.

Accommodation is the main expense. DD lives with three others, they look around a lot each summer and have all inclusive deals. Also when they (maybe around now) know that students are starting back, banks offer deals. I think DD has 5% on one account and a free travel card from the one her loan goes into. She has a SO to transfer a certain amount each month from one to the other to get the best rate. I think that's right.

As someone said above, I consider her an adult and I just complete the student finance form (declaration of earnings).

You'd be better off saving that money for a house deposit to be honest. Loan will cover fees etc and she can get a part time job to fit around studies to have money for going out etc.

Use the student loan calculator on the student finance website to work out what he'd be entitled to now. I get the full 8,000 loan and £500 a month allowance from parents, and my rent and bills are about £400 a month. I also get a £1,800 bursary from my university. About £2,000 is left at the end of the year which goes in a savings account. I dont go out drinking but do have good food and go shopping quite a lot, so this is the higher end of normal expenditure I would say. So if you want him to be very comfortable (I know I am, and I acknowledge the privilege of that!) work out how much per year you'd need to give him now based on roughly these figures and his expected student loan, and then keep checking the situation of student finance and your household income as he gets closer to actually going.

It depends how well off you are.

If you have a low income the loans will cover everything, and there will probably be bursaries available from the university on top of that. This is what I fell into, loans covered everything and more. I then worked for the university, as well as having a job in the holidays and lived off that money. I put most of my maintenance loan into savings and had a flat rental deposit for when I left, so I could move to a larger city.

However if you are a bit wealthier the loans will be lower and won't cover all of the accommodation costs. So you will have to provide that.

If you are even wealthier you may want to cover everything which will be very expensive but I don't have any idea how expensive, sorry!

Work on the basis of him taking the maximum loans he is entitled to.

About 80% of students don't pay off all their loans so paying loans off or not taking them is quite likely to be money down the drain.

By all means save what you can afford to, but also live for now. If he ends up going to university, he can take the loans and get a job. But as others have said, any money available might be better spent on a house deposit rather than student living costs.