Parents of students - how much do you contribute?

[diydemon]

Thinking ahead (not that far) to dd1 going to uni - we're trying to work out how much it'll cost.

Our income means she'll only get the tuition fees and 75% of the maintenance loan and we/she (through PT work) will need to fund the rest.

How much is "the rest" though? The directgov calculator suggests a parental contribution/student earned income of £7444 per annum, bringing it to a total of around £10k (without tuition fees)

Is this realistic? Can/do they manage on that or do you find you have to fork out more?

It is costing someone I know £1k per month to keep his daughter at uni in London without a loan. I don't know if that includes fees or not.

Although not at that stage yet with my DCs, as a university lecturer I spend a lot of time with my students dealing with personal issues including finance. In my view £10K plus tuition fees should be plenty. I would work backwards by deducting accomodation from £10K and see what is left as accomodation is likely to be the biggest cost and does vary hugely depending on location. When looking at the remainder remember that the academic year is only 30-36 weeks. Personally I find I have more problems with students who are given too much money as they tend to do is spend it on alchohol. Additionally those who work in the hols (I wouldn't advise term-time) to help fund their time show a far higher degree of maturity and ultimately end up far more emplyable at the end of the course.
Hope this doesn't present more queries than it answers but feel free to come back if you have any other queries.

Thanks - I would think London would cost more.

Macsmum - that's very useful info - we don't want to be mean to her, but it's a valid point about not giving them too much.

Also, we have another dd who's 3 yrs younger so it's likely both will be at college at the same time (dd1 wants to do a language, so 4-year course) so we can't over-commit to dd1 at the future expense of dd2.

DD1 is working one or two nights now as a waitress while doing AS levels (adds up to no more than eight hours a week) and has matured a lot since doing that - she even cleans up in the kitchen after herself!

Not sure how feasible it is to just find work during the holidays, but that's a question for another day when hopefully the recession might have lessened.

Supermarkets, waitressing and bar work still seem to be in ample supply for those students who are reliable hardworkers - certainly in the Gloucestershire area. Having some waitressing experience already will help her demonstrate she has a good work ethic when the time comes so I wouldn't worry about that.

DD is at Exeter and gets 75% of the loan -she is currently paying £120 a week for her shared house - that includes electricity, phone/broadband, insurance & pretty much everything except food (and drink!)
Next year she'll be paying £90 a week but will have to pay her own share of the bills, which she is hoping will not work out to more than about £35 a week (if she'd stayed in her current house it would have been £125 next year)

However, it works out as more expensive than necessary because the standard contract runs from mid September to early August, while the university year started in October & ends in early June - which means that either DD will get a holiday job at home and have to pay 2 months rent for a house she can't use, or get a job in Exeter which she will have to leave at the beginning of August because she then won't have anywhere to live.

We pay DD's rent (presently around £3400), she has the tuition loan and gets the maintenance loan to pay for food/books/socialising etc -BUT she has been very frugal and not touched most of it.

A friend has a DD in London & the rent is almost £7k pa WITHOUT food!!

I'm estimating that it will cost £10k per year for DS2 who starts at university (outside London) in the autumn. He will also only get the non-assessed maintenance loan which the Bank of Mum will top up for him. I'm also planning to pay off his tuition fees when he graduates as I paid his elder brother's tuition fees when he was a student. For anything else he'll need to get a p/t job. And he is a very lucky DC having parents who are willing to help him out!

I'm currently not contributing much at all for ds2. He's had his fee loan and is paying for rent/food/social out of his maintenance loan/ grant. He doesn't have an overdraft. If we go to see him I do him a shop. I will have to contribute next year as he's doing his second year abroad. He maintenance loan/grant comes to almost £5700 for the year, his accommodation out of that is a little over £3k (no food) so quite cheap really.

We paid our DDs tuition fees and their rent which came to about £7k a year (both graduated a few years ago). DS was much less as he lived at home while studying. I'd second waitressing as the ideal student job. DD1 had a flatmate who worked in a pizza restaurant and was given a pizza to take home every day. They never went hungry .

Cleverly - your ds2 sounds like he's excellent at handling money!

It sounds as though between us and dd1 we'll need to raise up to £7k per year.

It's that year when dd1 and dd2 are both likely to be at uni which will be the most expensive - although of course we won't also be funding them at home too - so the food/heating bills should plummet!

And I guess that'll also be the end of family holidays together which is quite sad but half the price it is now as they're both counted as adults.

We built up quite a large surplus on our electricity payments during the year that DS & DD were both at university!

He doesn't have much choice to be fair diydemon. I was hoping he'd be able to find a job to ease it a little but work seems a bit thin on the ground. Lack of funds has curtailed his lager habit somewhat so that can only be a good thing

ds's is £8900 that includes £3225 for tuition which they don't see (it goes straight to uni). Accommodation without food is around £3k (that's quite cheap generally), that leaves just over £2.5k for food, social, travel, books, mobile etc

We worked out that if we Hadn't paid DD's rent then she would have had

ds has £50ish pounds a week to live on. I'm trying to get him to remember (fairly unsucessfullY) that he needs cash during the holidays too

DD1 is in 2nd year - she gets the tuition fee loan and the minimum maintenance loan, which covers her rent + a bit. She is at a uni outside London & has a cheap room (£60/week + bills).
She got £5k last year from a savings account set up by grandparents, and as far as I am aware hasn't spent it yet in 18mths, as hasn't been back for more money.
However, she is a real cheapskate - goes out to a few uni clubs, but does not go out clubbing or generally drinking much, does not spend much on clothes etc and mostly cooks her own meals.
I would budget for £5k/year on top of the loans - more in London

They can survive on it Riven (outside London anyway). We're a bit tight on cash here too and I thought it best to cut him loose with his loan and see how he got on. My friend pays her son's rent but her son just spends willy-nilly so he'll end up with the same amount of debt. Hopefully we may be able to help ds2 clear his debt sometime in the future . And knowing he wanted to do this year abroad we've kept back any possible contribution to help out with flights etc in his second year.

Good luck with that

So how much or rather how little do parents have to earn to get the tuition fees and maintenance loan? I have a long way to go before mine go but have no idea. Tuition was free when i went - 1992-95 and i had a grant and a student loan.

Everyone can get the fee loan - it's not dependent on income. You can get an estimate of the grant/maintenance loan here