DC University fund

[Krimskrams]

Hiya everyone! Do you have a figure you work to for your DC's university pot? Or do you just put a set amount in each month? I don't know how much I should be aiming to save. We have about 10 years to save, so keen to start but don't know where or how to!
Thank you x

For rent alone and ds living off the minimum maintenance loan, it cost us about £24k over 3 years.

I wish we'd saved!

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. That definitely helps (and terrifies!) me and gives me an idea of what to work to. :)

The maintenance loan is dependant on your salaries. Minimum is about £4,300 iirc. Ds manages well on that, it's the rent which is a killer.

We're saving £15000 each, as they'll only get the minimum loan due to our income, and then use that to pay their rent. We may need to top up, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

We were fortunate that we were able to pay for our 2 sons’ ( 27 & 25) accommodation without a specific savings pot. They were both there for 3 years with a one year overlap. Approximately £36K if that helps. Not London.

If you want to support the whole 3yrs with fee’s too I’d say you should be aiming towards 27k for the fee’s plus around 11k per year for maintenance (including rent). That’s the full loan amount. So 60k per child.

If you want to support living costs only that’s more achievable I’d assume. 33k or thereabouts, maybe more with inflation. My DS goes this year, fortunately for him his dad has been working overseas for a few years so had received an inflated salary which has gone towards paying for his Uni so he won’t need to get a loan

As others have said if you have a high combined salary your DC will only get minimal loan and parents are expected to top up. So I’d say you need 6k per year to top this up, so 18k is another figure to aim towards

www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loan-parental-contribution-tool/ This is a really useful calculator. It takes into account household income and other children.

Accommodation fees will also vary according to standard. We wanted DD to have her own bathroom so cost more. Unis have guidelines to costs on their
Websites which include living costs for area. Also depends if you want them to have catered halls. Preparing for Uni is a great time to teach your child how to budget properly and how to cook. If you’re able to help them with costs then my suggestion would be to transfer weekly so they can manage their funds more easily.

We haven’t saved specifically for this but can find it from monthly income, it will cost us about £500 a month over the year which is not far off what it costs to have DD at home tbh, taking transport, clothing, food, hobbies etc into account.

My DS lives on minimum loan I pay his rent he pays utilities

I saved about 5K but my dd went to Uni in 2013 for 4 years. She got the lower maintenance loan due to our income. We gave her £1000 a year towards her rent from the savings and also paid £200 a month into her bank account from our income. She managed very well on that. She’s been working for almost 5 years now and paid off a substantial amount of her student debt.

Only recently actually started planning for this and I inky have 3 years before the first starts. I've set up £100 a month at the moment, I'm on my own, DCs dad won't think about it so it'll be down to be as is everything else.

It's not enough, I've told DC they need to get a job and I can't do it all.

Dc thinking about a gap year to do a college foundation course which would give an extra year and time for them to work and save.

A friend advised she pays £100 a week for food etc spending money, plus the rent of £170 a week in halls.
😭

If the current max parental contribution is around £18k over three years, then I think you need to aim to save that much as a minimum and ideally about £24k to allow for both inflation and erosion of the value of student finance against actual living costs. And more if a 4 year course might be on the cards.

If that's too much, bingo, extra holiday or something. But if your DC doesn't have enough, then it makes it harder for them (needing to work more hours, limiting choce by cost of living rather than suitability of course, etc)

Also bear in mind if they go on to do a Masters then the maintenance loan isn't available.

I've just paid for my DD's first year in Halls at Uni - with meal plan it comes to £9,000 per year. She will get a loan for fees. She will work spending money and weekend meals. So you need about £27,000 per child for a 3 year degree without funding their tuition fees

Thank you @Krimskrams for this thread. I hadn't realised halls could be so pricey!

We paid / are paying their rent and they pay the rest from student loan .
It has been about 8k a year .
Only 2/3 years left , thank goodness !

We're working towards saving £35k per child by the time they're 18. Ideally I'd like that to be able to cover some contribution towards university and also to help them get on the property ladder, but I'm aware it might not stretch that far. That's what's we feel is achievable though, and will try to increase the amount we put away in the future if circumstances allow.

We saved from DC being very young, but the 'pot' doesn't cover it.

We pay about £6,500 per year per child. Unfortunately we hadn't accounted for both doing 4 year courses!

We are still having to put money in from 'current'. Praying that the car doesn't die and that we can still manage after energy price rises

Two kids who qualified for minimum maintenance loan. This was theirs to manage for food, entertainment etc and we covered the rent.

Rent has ranged from £4,500 per annum to around £6,500 in catered halls (2014 cost).

Both finished Uni without an overdraft and with a few quid saved.

I didn’t save anything but spent £500 per month for 12 months a year per DC out of income.They got the minimum maintenance loan of 4K, rent was around 6k so we paid the difference in rent and then the rest was spent on an allowance for food etc.
So it cost is 6k per year per DC.

We saved $300 per month for each DC from the time they were toddlers, and it helped a lot. We're in the US where the costs are higher. There's a special investment account here called a 529 plan that lets you save with no tax on the earnings and capital gains when used for higher education. That helped too.

It's frightening how much costs have risen. Looking back through these posts of £6,500 a year for halls in 2014 to £8,000 for halls for 2022 entry, I'd be budgeting £11,000 plus for ten year's time OP