Best way to meet children's university costs; savings/investments, salary ...?

Yup sounds like you have some expensive years ahead.

I don't have 4 dependants but am investing for retirement in parallel to investing to provide my son with early life help (around half university costs and half the house deposit) which he will need in between 15 to 25 years time. I am using a JISA and my LISA respectively as the dates match up well. If they keep LISAs going long enough there might also be leftovers to enable me to feed our pensions while retired until my wife's LISA becomes available to continue feeding the pensions.

Have you considered opening four Orbis Access junior ISAs? If you act quickly they have an offer to match the first £100 contributed in each account (so a £400 starter bonus) and run any investments made in the first 12 months in no-fee units 18yrs. Given their age I would consider the Orbis Balanced fund which uses equity hedging (rather than bonds so you don't have so much interest rate risk) to control volatility. It's nice and easy and you can do it with just 1 adult login.

Orbis have an alternative strategy to most managers and over long enough periods for meaningful comparison have delivered above benchmark returns since the late 80s. If you buy normal units after 12 months they will be on an entirely performance fee structure where they even refund when they have done worse than average. They only cover their admin costs when they outperform.

Alternatively for a more mainstream and passive approach how about four Vanguard JISA using a Target Retirement fund matched to when they will each be 18? I know they are not retiring but the principle of reducing volatility as the withdrawal date approaches is the same. In this case there is not much advantage of using Junior ISAs over your ISAs.

My son is younger so I am using the Orbis Global Equity fund for the first 8 years then probably switching to Vanguard (hopefully after the medium term risks to bonds has passed) to dial down the volatility. Unfortunately you cannot switch between the two funds in Orbis after 12 months without loosing the fee-free status on those early contributions. However for you if you start with the Balanced Fund this might not be an issue. You can always transfer to Vanguard after the first year without loosing the bonus.

Good luck
Alex.

I'd start by doing a cash-flow projection of the years from beginning to end to see where the greatest outgoings are likely to be. They might not quite overlap, but you might have a year or two with three to support at once! :eek:

You can then calculate what the shortfall that needs to be met is and how that might fit into all the other financial aspects of life.

In my case, I am now over the worst of the outgoings, although costs seem to have risen greatly across the support years. The net effect has been to delay my early retirement plans, so I do wish I had been more organised back at the stage you are at!

But the student loan will only cover a proportion of the costs so some students end up in the private loan, bank overdraft, credit card, etc markets where the lenders are systematically and brutally farming the young for profit.

I agree it doesn't make sense to cover the whole cost so if you have enough hold some back to help with weddings, house deposit, etc. My plan is to provide help but not deny the child the achievement of contributing themselves and completing the job.

Do not rule out the Junior Sipp. It is never too soon to start saving for a pension !
J_B.