How much (or little) to save towards uni costs?

[scuddingxx]

I'm planning ahead... and thinking we may well be retired by the time our primary aged children go to university... so we're going to need to put aside savings.

How much does uni cost for a typical 3/4 year course?

How much to save for living expenses...?

What do most people do? I don't plan on paying for everything but I want to have something useful set aside.

Sorry, £69k altogether from his parents

It's only assessed on income not assets so depending on your pensions and retirement income your kids may get a full maintenance loan which wouldn't require much topping up and depending on the course they may be able to work to fill the gap.

No one has any idea what the system of student fees etc will be like that far in the future. The government is discussing reducing fees at the moment, and they play around with the loans schemes (current and previous ones in repayment) regularly.

Just save as much as you can, and then they can choose to spend it on Uni or a house deposit or whatever.

I don't think it's that necessary to save. Loan covers the course cost, I was first year of £9000 fees.

I got quite a large maintenance loan due to relatively low household income. I also got £1000 grant from the university.

This covered my very expensive catered accommodation.

I also worked through the uni holidays in a few different jobs. Didn't need any financial contributions from my parents.

Although they did give me some money occasionally as a gift sort of thing.

However, I don't know how the loan amount works with household income etc if you're retired.

Should say that the £1000 grant from uni was per year.

DD is at home, and works, so covers all her costs (car related mostly), and contributes to the household bills. She's pretty cheap really as she doesn't often go out or socialise with her course mates (they're all drinkers she isn't), but I can imagine normal student spend is far higher.

Lots to think about.

We'll save what we can.

Hopefully things will change for the better with regards to university fees and house prices won't be so mad in the future but I'm not betting on it.