That’s like £100 a week isn’t it. How the heck are they supposed to ..etc

More than I get!

they’re not permitted to work during term,
Who says this? A university?

Yes. like MoreCashThanDash’s boy, my daughters going to Cambridge. To be fair, she’s got 30 hours of contact time mon-sat, plus prep, study etc so doesn’t leave too much time to work.

hopefully they are better at maths than you or are studying an arts degree 😉

It’s arithmetic, not maths, but yes you’re right that was atrocious on my part.

:-)

We have 2 away at unis in England.

1 entering final undergraduate year of 3.
The other entering 2nd undergraduate year of 3 years.

They get the minimum maintenance loan. We top up to the max loan value.

#1 has ended each year with money in the bank.

#2 ended year 1 and got through most of the summer with no extras.

They chose different accommodation quality based on whatever budget planning they did.

I expect we’d lend them extra beyond what we are giving them if they asked for it and produced a proposal.

@easily I think I’d be prepared to pay more than a fiver to not have to see your feet?

@the-muffin-man

My daughters friend funded a year in Australia by selling feet pics!

Of course she did. ;-)

Of course she did. 😉

Her feet were behind her ears….

@MoreCashThanDash – great minds think alike.

great dirty minds think alike.

Going into his final year, he’s paying £180 for a double room in college. Shared kitchen and shower. I thought that was expensive compared to previous years but looking at figures here, obviously not.

Is that per week?
Housing is silly in Edinburgh – eldest pays £600 a month for a room in 6 bed tenement flat that’s a dive and they’re taking landlord to tribunal over the condition… And I’ve a third starts at Edinburgh Uni next year…

Is that per week?

Yep.

Knowing how expensive Cambridge is for regular housing I was very concerned when he started applying, but as all the accommodation is owned by the colleges, who have more wealth than most African nations (probably where it came from), its surprisingly good value compared to other unis. They also didn’t pass on the rise in fuel prices over the last two years, just doing it now.

Though it may not feel it when you are in the fourth floor attic room of a single glazed listed Victorian building with an Edwardian heating system, sharing a tiny kitchen which has no oven, and the shared showers are in the basement 😀

i was horrified to find she was buying value cheese. Student or not, no daughter of mine is eating value cheddar, so I upped with a cheese surplus. These things are important

That is first rate parenting right there.

From this i can see that a) Uni got *really* expensive in the last 30+ years and b) you lot support your kids exceedingly well. So well done.

Despite graduating nearly 3 decades ago, i finished with over 15000 in debt, 90% of it spent on food, rent and text books. (My dad didn’t top up my 100 quid a term grant at all. And my mum was broke, setting up on her own.)
IIRC typical debt on graduation back then was around 1.5-2k.

I lived on value cheese for 4 years. The baked bean wars were an utter godsend.

On the plus side, i had a couple of good jobs and lived well within my means and cleared it relatively quickly.

Sorry if my value cheese comment was off the mark, I know that plenty of students have to really scrimp no matter what grant and work they do. Wasn’t meant to be condescending and equally while I top my daughter up to the full and a bit, that doesn’t mean she’s rolling in it – she’s really learned to budget (that was a parental worry, was she going to be like her mum!) and while she’s a good cook she’s also developed some recipes that she can knock out for a couple of quid a portion and then freeze two further ones. I did say she should really batch up to 10 or 12 portions and sell the rest to others in her flat for £3 a portion but she wasn’t keen.

So while life is too short for value cheese (and bad coffee, this is STW after all) that’s another tip and reason why I’d go in low to start with and if they really can’t manage top up – the skills of living to a budget and learning not to rely on takeaways and shop bought ready meals are something they should work on.

Lastly – I was one of the last lucky ones, three years in halls, fully catered (and eating in the Great Hall of Durham Castle to boot!) and full grant covered by the local authority. IDK what I’d have done nowadays, 35 years later.

Sorry if my value cheese comment was off the mark

Not at all.

So while life is too short for value cheese (and bad coffee, this is STW after all) that’s another tip and reason why I’d go in low to start with and if they really can’t manage top up – the skills of living to a budget and learning not to rely on takeaways and shop bought ready meals are something they should work on.

That as well. One thing that being broke at Uni taught me was how to turn crap, low quality food into a decent meal. Or several decent meals.

Talking of jobs, my son has got a parttime Halfords job in the bike shop in Exeter. He’s been shielded from shit bikes all his life and his now having to sell people Apollos and £600 ebikes. He said to me “I know when they take the bikes away that they will be back in a few weeks with something not working” .. Quite an eye opener for the poor lad :D

My daughter is off to Uni for the first time.  She worked over the summer and saved £4.5K so it works out as follows:

Halls: £7.5K We paid

Grant/Loan: £3.8K

Savings: £4.5K

She’s got the loan for tuition fees as well.

shielded from shit bikes all his life and his now having to sell people Apollos and £600 ebikes.

I think I’m adopting this as the official definition of a first world problem :-)

We’ve worked on paying the accommodation, and the basic student loan (restricted for them by dint of my level of income) works out at about £3000 per year / £1000 per term / £100 per week (during term time).

Ours have some work part time, but not the real work ethic that OAB sets out above.

It’ll come in time (I hope).

We’re always there to be guarantors on flat rental, extra kit (depending on the course requirements), taxi and removals duties, full board catering when back at home etc.

I’ve had to amend my working / retirement plans recently though.

No. 3 has started a course, but at a performing arts college rather than uni. This means he’s not eligible for student funding, and sadly (for me) my income exceeds the threshold for the DaDa grants available. As a result, i’ve now got £20,000 pa fees and London living expenses to fund, rather than the £6.000 pa ish that I’ve been paying for the others at uni.  On the positive side, he won’t have student loans / debts / tax…

So instead of the expected 3 year cost to me of £20,000 odd, I now have an additional c£75,000 to find. Ouchety-ouch. That’s a lot of extra work for me, and additional loans to pay off.

I’m hoping no.4 follows nos 1. and 2, rather than the route of no.3

Halls: £7.5K We paid

When people say this, do you mean because your child only got the minimum maintenance loan, or because they took less loan than than they could have?

Others have said this above, but it’s not a proper loan, it’s an additional tax on earnings above a threshold.

Most people on average earnings will never pay it off, so it really doesn’t matter how much you borrow.

If you as a parent have cash spare, then much better to put it towards a house deposit, or other long term savings.

Martin Lewis has the numbers, bit someone graduating into a £30k job, would pay something like an extra £200 per year in tax to pay back the student loans.

Sorry if my value cheese comment was off the mark,

I honestly didn’t think it was off the mark at all, I genuinely approve.

My daughter started at Aberdeen this week, it is our first child at Uni.

We are paying her accommodation and hope to be able to to do that throughout but pinch point will come in a couple of years if her younger sister also wants to go to Uni. For now though, it is £100 per week for halls.

She has a loan to pay for everything else which she budgets for. She intends to get a job as she is pretty good with money and wants to keep loan to a minimum.

So while life is too short for value cheese (and bad coffee, this is STW after all) that’s another tip and reason why I’d go in low to start with and if they really can’t manage top up – the skills of living to a budget and learning not to rely on takeaways and shop bought ready meals are something they should work on.

We have found teaching the lads how to *properly* cook and on a budget has saved a metric shed load of their spends. It is amazing how many students arrive not being able to cook – and certainly not a variety on a budget. Eldest and a couple of flat mates are really getting into cooking now and all appreciate that while they are not living on steak, there are some wonderful, tasty, cheap and varied meals to cook. They also have ‘cake baker of the week’ going on and every week bake two cakes or tray-bakes for the flat…But yes, some things still need to be quality.

Edit: I do remember having to chat things through with eldest when he was caught sneaking too much Tenants into Switzerland last summer as somewhere in ‘burgh was doing a cheap deal. We had to discuss ‘standards’ around food and hydration….

From this i can see that a) Uni got *really* expensive in the last 30+ years and b) you lot support your kids exceedingly well. So well done.

Universities’ raison d’etre changed.  They are now about income generation.  When fees came in there should have been a competitive battle to see who could attract students with the best pricing, discounted halls, better teaching, courses aligned to industry need / job prospects.  But actually, none of that has really happened.  HMO rules that were intended to stop landlords exploiting people like students in unsafe accommodation actually seem to have change the supply model and now there are massive businesses extorting student rather than lots of dodgy little guys.

Though it may not feel it when you are in the fourth floor attic room of a single glazed listed Victorian building with an Edwardian heating system, sharing a tiny kitchen which has no oven, and the shared showers are in the basement

The house is probably worth best part of £2m in central Cambridge!

Universities’ raison d’etre changed. They are now about income generation. When fees came in there should have been a competitive battle to see who could attract students with the best pricing, discounted halls, better teaching, courses aligned to industry need / job prospects. But actually, none of that has really happened.

Yes, it was another example of the Tories hoping that if you waft the phrase ‘free market’ around a bit, everything will automatically become amazing.

In reality a) if you make it so more people need degrees (ie for nursing & teaching) you increase demand and thus remove the need for universities to compete on price, and b) if you fix fees and then let fiscal drag do its thing, uni’s will start making a loss on £9k fees and thus you remove their ability to compete on price.

Which is why all the Russell group unis are going balls-out to attract international students with their higher fees, and everyone who can afford it is building student accommodation to subside the fees.

There is going to be a massive crunch in the next 10 years and it’s not going to be pretty.

Sorry, bit off topic!

My niece has just started in Bristol and is paying £700/m for a room in a shared house. That’s more than my mortgage 😭

Sandwich Jr has just returned to his SALT masters. His accommodation this year is £12.5k!! He has expensive tastes and has self-funded through nursing work earnings during an enforced absence due to Bells Palsy last September.

During his first degree we topped up to the loan max and said anything more had to be through earnings. He did a fair few care-worker shifts at residential nursing homes in his Learning Disability speciality. He’s now on bank work for the local hospital to keep his loan drawings to a minimum. Those doing nursing have the ability to work as care-workers after the first year and are in high demand due to their better than average skill-sets.

Which is why all the Russell group unis are going balls-out to attract international students with their higher fees, and everyone who can afford it is building student accommodation to subside the fees.

They’ve been doing that long before fees.

I remember Reading Uni winning the Queens award for export back in the late 80s for attracting 1000s of overseas students (when we still had grants).

Universities’ raison d’etre changed. They are now about income generation.

I am currently taking a break from typing up an invitation to a university to work with us on an evaluation of a project.
It is eye opening what a daily rate the university is expecting staff to be charging – on top of which is another third of facilities and university central costs…

Edit: I do remember having to chat things through with eldest when he was caught sneaking too much Tenants into Switzerland last summer as somewhere in ‘burgh was doing a cheap deal. We had to discuss ‘standards’ around food and hydration….

As you said in your post above, the lads doing a lot of cooking 😝

TCL

Eldest is off on 22nd of the month for her first year at Aberystwyth.

She has 10k saved from a year out working which is spread across 2 ISAs that mature this and next November plus a grand in her current account. We will top her up regularly with £150 and month plus ad-hoc as required.

She gets minimum maintenance which is think is c. 4.2k. This is more or less break even on her accomodation costs.

We’ve bought all her stuff and helped her with her first car. Running costs are her responsibility but we’ll help her her with unexpected repairs and the like.

I’ve worked all year with her on fiscal responsibility and showing how having cash in savings makes her more cash. She’s planning on working for the uni (max 15 hours a week) and is pretty tight, so I think she’ll be alright.

In fact, our financial planning indicates she might come out the other side with a few k if she’s moderately careful.

Being able to work is the single biggest factor. Even 10 hours a week makes a big difference to the float.

Then she’ll be paying extra tax for the rest of her working life.

desperatebicycle

Talking of jobs, my son has got a parttime Halfords job in the bike shop in Exeter. He’s been shielded from shit bikes all his life and his now having to sell people Apollos and £600 ebikes. He said to me “I know when they take the bikes away that they will be back in a few weeks with something not working” .. Quite an eye opener for the poor lad

I’m sure this is tongue-in-cheek, but a mate of mine & real bike nut at uni worked at Halfords in Hayes, W London.
He sold me an Apollo Equito which I put 1000’s of miles on, including taking it over to Germany when on my 6-month student placement in Bavaria.
Only issue in the 4 years or so I owned it was putting a large tree branch through my rear mech, which was fixed with a replacement mech for about 30 Deutsch marks.
It was still going strong in my final year, but got nicked out of the bike shed one evening – some blokes in a van pulled up & emptied the whole shed.

Amazed with some of the accommodation costs people are banding about! I was at uni a long time ago and seem to remember the grubby 1st year halls with shared loo/shower etc. was £45/week while the posh final year halls with en suite bathrooms were £80.
When I used to live in Cambridge (got a job there after graduating), the most I paid for a shared house was £340/month for a large 3-bed semi-detached, sharing with 2 others. That was a 10 min walk from the centre, near the Beehive centre for those who know Cambridge – it’s probably not called that anymore.

Since my daughter was born, we’ve had an ISA for her that we intend to give to her when she’s older, or use for university/ towards first house deposit, depending on where her life takes here. Just wondering now if we should be putting more into it than we currently are :)

She’s asked me to ‘front load’ the first few months so she has less pressure to get a job until later in the year.

Ooooh, risky! I was a klutz with money at university (and girls, and studying, and everything else basically, it’s a miracle I escaped with a degree!) and ended up working through most of my study leave (for a mechanical engineering degree, not exactly ideal). If anything I’d be end loading the finances so she can focus 100% on exams etc. at the end of the year.

This is from a Southern Ireland perspective and a middle income earner.  We are mortgage free so this helps a lot We don’t have government backed student loans and I earn too much for her to get any financial assistance.

My daughter is in University (entering her 3rd year and final year but dropped out of her first course before this) and she narrowly missed doing medicine by a few points.  She lives at home and commutes there by bus.  She works part-time but most of that money seems to be spent on her  non-education interests such as travelling and keeping online shops in business and her old Fiat 500.  She doesn’t socialise that much but that’s another story.

We pay her fees of €3000 PA, her private medical health insurance, we typically pay for her medical related costs that aren’t covered by the private health insurance (including all prescription medicines).  She lives rent free, doesn’t contribute to food or utility bills, . We’d sometimes pick up the tab for some of her car expenses.

For the previous 3 years we were also paying €300 PM to our son who was in a London university but that’s finished now.

We also pay €110 PW for her horse but my wife likes to use the horse so I guess it’s not single use.  Having said that, the use of the horse per cost ratio is pretty crap IMHO.  There are also other horse related expenses such as shoeing, medical, dental…  It costs a lot more to run a horse than a mountain bike (and an eBike at that)!

Having done well in a recent GAMSAT exam, she hopes to have enough points to do medicine next year.  This is where it becomes really expensive.  Medicine costs €16000 PA (4 years) and we have agreed to pay €12000 PA so she’ll have to work for the other €4000.

At 56 years of age, everything we pay for her means less for our retirement but medicine is a dream of hers since she was a kid so I don’t begrudge her.  We joke she is our pension but in reality we don’t expect anything back from her.

That was a 10 min walk from the centre, near the Beehive centre for those who know Cambridge – it’s probably not called that anymore.

Still called that, but not for much longer, Railpen (who own it) are planning to demolish it and change the whole site. Original supermarket burnt down maybe 25 years ago and been an Asda ever since they rebuilt it.

Ooooh, risky! I was a klutz with money at university (and girls, and studying, and everything else basically, it’s a miracle I escaped with a degree!)

I guy in our halls spent every penny he had on booze on the 1st day arriving and had a massive party in his room – a sackbarrow was used to get the cans back from the off-licence. Interesting strategy….

Amazed with some of the accommodation costs people are banding about!

Indeed. Eldest_oab’s landlady has owned the flat for 32 years and gross income is £36,000 annually from it. She owns just short of 50 properties apparently.
It is on 100 year old windows, boiler is now 18 years old, and the bathrooms and kitchen were installed in 2003. As far as they can tell, the flat has not been decorated since 2011 as there is graffiti on a couple of door frames. Currently the owner is refusing to do anything in case of the new energy standards coming in being changed in the next 3-5 years…
It is galling to know how much money she makes – and yet shows so little interest in maintaining the property to a reasonable standard as a home.

First year he was in halls owner by uni, on their own site, in one of the older halls. IIRC the halls had been built in early 1980s – are basically painted breeze block walls, plastic ‘caravan’ like bathroom, plastic school table and chair etc. I know the uni provides security, cleaning of hallways etc – but how the heck the justify also charging £6.3k a year x 1700 hall bedrooms (assuming they have paid the capital build cost off already) is just staggering. Surely if a university is a charity to provide education to all, the halls (and tuition fees) should reflect how *low* they can keep the costs, not how much they can match market rates?

….Ireland….We pay her fees of €3000 PA….

I digress, but isn’t it interesting that the fees there are so much lower than the UK…

Not taking a full loan was one of my big(ger) regrets from Uni, I only took a loan in year 1&2, on advice from parents who were dead against any form of borrowing, apart from a mortgage. I’ve paid it all off now but, on account of having to work to live in my third year, I don’t have a degree…

This is where it becomes really expensive.

I’ll see you Medicine and raise you commercial flying. We’ve given Son 2 £300 per month living expenses on top of his fees for two years of flying school. He paid the fees for the year at Uni in Ireland, we paid the accommodation and living expenses. And no loans available. He’s finally finished now (and will graduate) and is currently on a TWO MONTH course, where the fees are TWO YEARS of medical school. Let’s just say the practicals are not cheap. He’s going to repay those final fees from his salary eventually.

My daughter has just finished uni in London. Basic maintenance grant barely covered accommodation. We topped that up with £550 per month and she worked part time.

Pinch point for us was when she had to do two terms at UC San Diego. We had to pay her accommodation up front (about £3k) and then about another £3k for her to live on. £6k in 6 months.

My son is about to start uni about 50 miles away. He has a part time job and will get a minimal maintenance grant so we will be subsidising him by £550 per month again.

I won’t know myself with the spare cash when they are both finished studying!

I have twin girls. They both went to university.  They borrowed the max all the time. I gave them £600 pcm each. Amy did a medicine degree and a BSc in a year so was there 6 yrs.  Her sister was a nursing degree.

It was very very hard for me, but id had no financial help from my parents for my degree and i remember how hard it was.

I would 100% rather go without, than make my daughters’ youth shitty with scraping around for money as an undergrad.

Im hoping they elect to put me in a non abusive care home when the day comes

Ian