Help needed! The cost of sending your kids to University.

jonnyburgo

My son is chomping at the bit to go, he's in 6th form right now and by all accounts doing well. He wants to go to Uni, our combined income just misses out on the full amount loan so we will obviously be helping him out, daughter will be following 18 months later so there will be a point when they are both at Uni.

Now then Martin Lewis reckons that on average parent have to stump up approx £4,100 per child per year for the pleasure of this once "free" institution. However on the save the student website there are figures alluding to average £125 per month in parental contribution, that is more doable for the pair of them, They will both be expected to get part time jobs whilst at Uni.

So I'm asking you guys that have to contribute what on average does it cost you? this is based on them living away at a non-London based Uni. It's stressing us out!

thumpingrug

Youngest daughter was at Uni 6 years ago, so my figures are a bit out of date, but, the basic student maintenance loan that she got barely covered her food and local travel needs at the time.  We payed all accommodation costs for the three years and gas/electric and water in years 2 and 3.  £4k in year one and nearer £4.5k for years 2/3.  We also had the occasional call especially later in the year that money was or had run out and could we help with food.  Several Tesco's delivers and multiple dominoes pizzas orders online from home.   £14-15k from us during the 3 years is rough guess.

jonnyburgo

thumpingrug said:

Youngest daughter was at Uni 6 years ago, so my figures are a bit out of date, but, the basic student maintenance loan that she got barely covered her food and local travel needs at the time.  We payed all accommodation costs for the three years and gas/electric and water in years 2 and 3.  £4k in year one and nearer £4.5k for years 2/3.  We also had the occasional call especially later in the year that money was or had run out and could we help with food.  Several Tesco's delivers and multiple dominoes pizzas orders online from home.   £14-15k from us during the 3 years is rough guess.

Thanks for that mate, bloody hell! not looking good, we've saved bit up for them over the years but not even anywhere near that. It will wipe us out at a time in life (50-ish) when we were looking forward to taking our foot off the gas a little. Depressing really.

Musicwolf

I'm in a similar situation to @jonnyburgo in that my son is in 6th form, although he's not exactly chomping at the bit, so I'd be interested to hear some figures.

I have a slightly different approach as I retired early a couple of years ago so I made a provision of £15k to cover what I expect to be a three year course.

exocet

Similar story here, my daughter received the basic loan of £3300(?) per year.
We paid for her accommodation which varied from £150 a week in 1st year to £650 per month in private rental years 2&3.
She took a part time job that brought her between £50 and £150 per month depending on hours worked 
My son is now doing same. 1st year costs very similar to daughter, 2nd year is cheaper because private rental in Sheffield is much cheaper than Brighton. I think he's (we're) paying £95 a week inc bills. He also has part time job that gets him around £150 per month.
 

olafgarten

I'd check accommodation prices first, that tends to vary based on the Uni. The rest of the expenses are basically the same except in London, where everything costs more. 

Kebabkid

We're at this stage, too, but haven't had the allowance figure through.

£150 a week for student accommodation and our son will need to find a job to help out as well as us tightening the purse strings and contributing to all the other things. I even amended my WTB post as I need to/want to hand over a substantial amount of my guitar fund to address this.

To think, education was once free and I regularly hear students come out of uni owing around £50K. With my son wanting to go into education and teaching, we're also going to have to think about that 4th year.

fretmeister

I've only just started looking at this.

Is there an idiots guide?

Do all students get the tuition fee loan but then the maintenance one is subject to eligibility stuff?

ToneControl

You should only need to top up their loan to the max amount of about £9500

As usual, the gov website is confusing and gives only a few examples
Student finance: how you're assessed and paid - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)


The reason Martin Lewis says "average parents" and £4k is that SFE count both parents' salaries in the calculation (i.e. salaries of parent  who the child lives with + that parent's partner), and on average salaries, it reduces the loan available
e.g. If the 2 parents' total salaries come to more than about £62k, then the maintenance loan is reduced by about £5k per year, per student. So I think Martin Lewis means that average salary x 2 would mean needing to contribute £4100

Read reckoner 2 here which gives good examples:
Martin Lewis: How much the Govt expects parents to give their children while at university 2021/22 (moneysavingexpert.com)

for parents on £70k+, contribution is £6.2k for a student studying in London

The Gov calculator says to include the student's own income in the calculation
But the gov info page says it's only unearned income, so  yet another badly-written gov web page:

We’ll look at your household income which includes:

• your parents’ income if you’re a dependent student

• your expected unearned income during the academic year, such as dividends from investments/shares or income from property lettings

• your husband, wife or civil partner’s income (or your partner’s income if you’re over 25) if you’re an independent student (see note below)

...
You should only include payments from an employer if you’re being released from your employment by your employer to attend your course.

the full maintenance loan is about £9.5k
It should be possible to live on this outside London, if the loan plus what you contribute comes to this, there should be no need for your student son to do part time work unless he wants the cash for more expensive accommodation or guitars/holidays/etc

As a comparison, in the 80s, student grants were about £6k in today's money (i.e. taking inflation into account)

Students on £9.5k could live better than students in the 80s, other than the fact that most Unis charge inflated prices for accommodation - it varies a lot between Unis. Cheapest is about £100 per week
Some Unis have nothing this cheap, and start at £140 per week

The private landlords in the popular student areas join the feeding frenzy, and only charge a little less.
My daughter pays £100 a week, not including bills, for a room in a 100 year old 3 bed terrace that has water leaking into her walls. the front living room is rented out as an extra bedroom, so rental costs £1730 per month. The rent would be half of that in a non-student area. (This is Manchester - you know yourself how much houses cost away from the Uni area)
The trouble is, few students want to live in a normal part of a university city, they want to live with their mates, in a lively student part of town

Some Uni cities have far less cheap accommodation, it's worth researching this as we did

My daughter was in catered halls for year 1, I think it was £150 a week
my Mrs gave her an extra £1200 I think
In the end, it turned out that my daughter is so stingy she has money left over.
She always drinks at home before going out, does not splash out on treats all the time

She tops up her savings with casual temp work during the holidays rather than a regular job during term time

rsvmark

There is some (hard to find) guidance. Fees can be taken care of by loans at £9250 each academic years…. Setting aside the rights and wrongs of that.

in terms of living and accommodation there is a huge variation. My lad is in fully catered at about £7k for the year. My daughter was in self catered at about £5500 iirc. Factor in food, books, travel and things like sports clubs too. Ours had their own laptops and phones already. We ended up agreeing with them that the uni selection and accommodation is their choice so we set their budgets at 10k a year as we didn’t want them to struggle financially- and focus on their studies. Of course you can set your budget and decide how much loan and how much you want to top that up by.

Hope that helps

ToneControl

fretmeister said:

I've only just started looking at this.

Is there an idiots guide?

Do all students get the tuition fee loan but then the maintenance one is subject to eligibility stuff?

yes

but only for England

students from Wales all get the full maintenance loan, plus a grant on top

munckee

I’m in a similar position in that my daughter is in 1st year of a levels and is in doubt about going to uni despite me suggesting the army instead. 

I don’t know yet what the income thresholds are for loans but I fully expect to or digging deep. 

fretmeister

ToneControl said:

fretmeister said:

I've only just started looking at this.

Is there an idiots guide?

Do all students get the tuition fee loan but then the maintenance one is subject to eligibility stuff?

yes

but only for England

students from Wales all get the full maintenance loan, plus a grant on top

Thank you.

HerbieTheRadDorklift

Send him to shadow an electrician 4 days a week, college the other day  

EricTheWeary

My son is in his third year at uni. 

It is a 260 mile round trip which adds to the cost and inconvenience.
His loan covers his rent so essentially we clothe and feed him so the £125 per month sounds about right plus those fuel costs a few times per year. He has done summer jobs so any boozey nights out,etc, are self funded. He does quite a bit of basic cooking - stir fries and rice,etc - whereas his flat mates seem to spend a fortune on takeaways. I pay for his mobile phone, bits of other things. The overall cost to us not massively more than having him at home. 

Obviously the cost of living varies a lot from place to place. My son is in Leeds which seems to be very organised around student accommodation. His flat is near a market and a supermarket and he can walk to lectures so day to day costs are low. The standard of where he lives is a lot higher than anywhere I had in the 80s.

Stratavarious

Had one get through his 4 year business masters but my daughter is on to her PhD in genetic medicine.  If they want to carry on post-grad it is an endless cost!.  She is waiting to hear on an extra grant for her PhD which will help massively.

Housing help, etc. was around £300-400 a month but they both found cheap, shared rat infested digs from the second year to ensure the full student experience.  Extra work in PhD and final Masters years was not really an option for them although my daughter gets paid well to run labs with first and second years.

As others have said.. you can expect £10-15k all in with visits, emergency food parcels, etc.   We make the most of it and plan holidays around visits.

Both of them have got a massive positive effect from an out of London Russell Group Uni and a very good medical school.   In our case, money cannot measure the value. They have both made some amazing friendships too and it has been a joy to see them thrive and be successful.  It has been a financial drain and limited things for us on some things but it never felt like it was bad.  It is so much bigger than school.

All I can say, is do the groundwork, visit lots of places and go for one where the course and location are really ideal.

bobblehat

Both of mine went to Uni . I wouldn't get too hung up on trying to work out a figure as it can vary massively from child to child and city to city.   What we found was, that essentially the student loan/grants available will generally cover the cost of tuition fees and accommodation.   We just gave them an allowance on top for food, booze and paid their phone bills. Both of my kids  only cost us around £50-£60 each /week and they managed quite comfortably on that.  (last one graduated about 5 years ago) 

They both finished up with students loans of around £40k each but it was money well spent as they both now have jobs and careers that they wouldn't have otherwise.

fretmeister

My eldest is looking at 5 year combined undergrad and masters in Aerospace Engineering.

Going to cost me a fortune.

Offset

fretmeister said:

My eldest is looking at 5 year combined undergrad and masters in Aerospace Engineering.

Going to cost me a fortune.

You have my profound sympathies. My daughter is in her first year at uni in central London.  She's doing a combined MA in Chiropractic, so that's 4 years up front with the option for a 5th year to add Animal Chiropractic to her toolbox.  Retirement?!  No chance!!!

bloodandtears

We looked at bunch of remote Unis but my eldest has decide to commute..  he'll get a loan for the fees.. we'll put the maintenance money into a gov savings scheme towards a house/pension. If he changes his mind during his time we will have to reconsider the accommodation funding.

I actually believe he'd miss being around us and his home comforts. His college experience has, like others, been impacted by Covid with home learning etc reducing the social element.

Someone actually advised me not to consider accommodation at this time because of the current Covid instability.... i.e. it could be wasted money if they're eLearning again...

Dominic

" If you think education is expensive......try ignorance "