In our new Uni Mum blog, founder of Viceroy Learning Charlie Wren will be giving expert advice about how to budget for University.
With exams nearly upon us and the long summer before university just weeks away, it’s time for both students and parents to start doing some serious planning for the financial side of further education.
Depending on the source you listen to (and your household income) the gap between what a student can borrow and what a student needs for living costs at university (i.e. aside from the tuition fee loan) can easily exceed £9,000… per year!
This means that planning for how to bridge that gap is essential. The unhappy truth is that two parents with relatively modest incomes will generate enough household income to significantly reduce how much their child can borrow (find your household estimate) and that means that, for lots of families, students will have to rely on the “Bank of Mum & Dad” even if that bank is not really equipped to finance them.
Planning is the only answer.
We have built a budgeting tool which is an easy-to-use (and completely free!) download which you can use to estimate how much the first year at university might cost. It has loads of data about the costs of different things as well as highlighting expenses that most people wouldn’t even think of. It goes further and even calculates your “cashflow” during the year and shows when the student is likely to bottom out on their account.
With this tool, some frank discussion and the long summer ahead there is still plenty that can be done to bridge the gap. How much could your son or daughter earn with a job over the summer? How much commitment would that show to their education? How great would that look on their CV?
Have a look at the budgeting tool - I promise there’s no catch and I guarantee you’ll find it useful (do it on a computer though because Excel and iPads aren’t friends!).
To find out more about how Viceroy Learning can help you as a student, a parent or a teacher, give us a call - we'd love to talk to you.
Read Local Mums Online’s interview with Charlie Wren and find out about Viceroy Learning’s University Ready Summer School in France
Contact:
Charlie Wren
Viceroy Learning
Tel: : 020 8674 7593
Mobile: 07825 229 150
Email: charlie@viceroylearning.co.uk
www.viceroylearning.co.uk
April 2016
We had a great meeting with Mike from StuRents.com back in November and we are delighted that they agreed to provide us with a stack of excellent data on the student housing market. This is going straight into our talks and budgeting data to make sure the people we work with are as well informed as they can be.
It's amazing to hear how little has changed in the mad rush for second year housing. The StuRents website went crazy on November 1st with students searching for accommodation for the following academic year (11 months later!). Durham seems to be the first city to move every year with Freshers desperate to pin down a good house from the "scarce" stock. The thing is, though, that student property isn't scarce - there's loads of it. And that's true for almost every student town.
To most onlookers (parents) the situation seems ridiculous: running around a town you've known for about 3 weeks with friends you've known for just as long trying to find a place to live in about a year. You then put down a deposit of somewhere between £200 and £400 per person and cross your fingers that you'll get that back 18 months later!
That's just one of the surprises parents are hit with every year. It is hard to understand, but if you were at university and everyone else was doing it, do you think you'd really do anything different?
It all comes down to a lack of good information about how life at university works. It's a problem that both Viceroy Learning and StuRents are addressing. We are happy to provide free information to LMO readers on how to budget for university so do get in touch.
To find out more about how Viceroy Learning can help you as a student, a parent or a teacher, give us a call - we'd love to talk to you.
Read Local Mums Online’s interview with Charlie Wren and find out about Viceroy Learning’s University Ready Summer School in France
Contact:
Charlie Wren
Viceroy Learning
Tel: : 020 8674 7593
Mobile: 07825 229 150
Email: charlie@viceroylearning.co.uk
www.viceroylearning.co.uk
