Live on £4000 for a year - part 4 (Oct - Dec 2008)

bails

Morning all! Great post Janey!

I have done an Approved Foods order too, hope it turns out okay!

Tried to get a doctor's appt yesterday and again today - when I finally got through today all the appts with the dr I needed to see are fully booked, so now I have to wait til Thurs :rolleyes:

Marru, I'm afraid I agree with Nyk, you have SO much on your plate at the mo, trying to find the best part of a grand on top would be such a struggle. Why don't you put the course on your wish list and work towards it once the other things are sorted? Remember, simplifying not complicating!

Now OH is back we're going to get the tree in from outside and decorate it tonight. The boy did good, he brought me home the toiletries from his hotel (H1lton - free with his friend's job) and they're 3 50ml tubes of Cr@btree and Ev£lyn stuff (there were 4 but his friend used part of one :rolleyes:) so they'll make a lovely pressie for someone :T Heeeee's learning! :T
Not much else going on in Frugalland Bath at the mo, need to concentrate on work as have 3 lessons to plan and teach this week. Talking of which, I'd really like a set of the alphabet letter fridge magnets you get for little ones, any ideas the cheapest place to get some? Been keeping an eye out in charity shops but no joy as yet (about to ring his mum and see if she has any). I find this side of the work frustrating as I can't really spend money on the resources I need yet as I won't see a return for such a long time. I can't wait til I can do this properly as a business! :j
Stockpiles are great - I fancied peanut butter yesterday but we'd run out; I popped to the under stairs cupboard and there was a pot waiting for me I'm having a problem with my inventory of things though as OH can't get his head round adjusting the list if he uses something - any tips anyone? I'm going to increase my stockpile in the new year as well - I wasn't sure whether to or not recently as people talked of prices going back down with petrol costs etc but as it seems to still be going the other way I think I'll just get what I can afford/store in January. I really resent buying things that aren't BOGOF/reduced these days :rotfl:

lilac_lady

When shopping for Christmas yesterday I found it very hard to part with my cash so I blame you lot. I feel like I've Jimminy Cricket on my shoulder as my conscience whispering "How much?, that's too dear and is it a bargain?"

I finally parted with my money for gifts but Jimminy wouldn't let me buy a jacket/cardigan for myself in Debenhams for £35.

I think Jimminy Cricket will be my constant companion throughout 2009.

bails

Well done Jimminy!

andromache_2

*PHEW* Just caught up with all the posts since Thursday - you lot do like to chat :rotfl: Had a nice weekend away in Latvia, though things seemed very expensive due to the weak pound :eek: but I can't complain as the whole thing cost me very little

Welcome to all the newbies and especially Masomnia - your budget, living costs, level of student loan and long-term financial aims are almost EXACTLY the same as mine, which is a bit scary! I'm trying to save as much as possible for graduation as well, which will either get spent on postgrad course fees or eventually a house deposit, depending on what exactly I end up doing and what scholarships and funding I manage to get I'm guessing you're a second-year too due to how high your student loan is?

On the topic of student finance, you've had lots of good sources of information already, cw, but I just thought I'd emphasise that there really is scads of money available for first-time students, especially given that by the sounds of things your taxable household income will be less than £25k when he goes to uni.

Tuition fees:
Whatever your income, he can borrow the money for the tuition fees (£3145 this year) from the SLC, so he won't have to worry about that until he graduates.

Living allowance:
As far as living costs go, as it seems that your household income will be below £25k, your son will be entitled to the maximum student finance package from the government, which this year is around £6.2k in a combination of around 55% student loan and 45% non-repayable maintenance grant. In addition, his university has to give him about £300 minimum as a grant for living costs; most give around £1000 and some universities give even more - mine pays something like £3150 a year as a grant for students getting the maximum amount from the student finance package (definitely the advice about going to a rich uni is true!). All these figures will have gone up to account for inflation by the time he graduates, so he should receive as a starting point around £7.5k for living costs even before he starts to think about earning money through other means. In fact what this means is that my friends whose household incomes are under £25k have quite a bit more money than I do, since I only get the minimum loan, even though my parents are generous & fortunate enough to be able to give me £250 a month! The amount that your son can get as a loan will be reduced if he lives with you at home, which you say is a possibility, but it will be reduced by less than the rent would have been so he'll still be well off. If he goes to uni in London, he can get a bigger loan to account for the higher rents.

I'd also add that your son will have massive 3-month summer holidays in which he can easily earn quite a bit of money to see him through the year if he needs to. Even if my parents gave me no money I'm pretty sure I would be fine financially if I just worked hard over the summer and spent that money gradually over the year along with my student loan, even though I'm only entitled to the minimum. I should also note that there will be other sources of money such as the university's hardship funds if your son has money problems, and scholarships (I've had over £1k in scholarships since coming to uni!), but obviously those are dependent on exam results!

OK, so he will graduate with debt - I will have around £20k owing to the SLC when I graduate. However, as you know the interest on the loan is at a low inflation-linked rate - they've just lowered it to 3% as well so that it's not too far above the BOE base rate - and repayments are affordable as they are linked to salary. So it's perfectly reasonable debt which should be worth it in the long run as I know my degree will increase my earning power by far more than £20k over my career! Furthermore, since the finance packages are so generous (well that's my opinion anyway, but then I am a member of this challenge ) he can probably save some of it anyway if he decides to be careful with his money when he's at uni; my general aim is to put the entirety of my first SLC payment of the year (so about £1150) into my 'graduation savings' pot and live off the money from my parents and my other two student loan payments for everything else, so about £5300 - this challenge is helping me with that! I'm lucky that my rent isn't too high though it's probably around average for halls of residence. And I do lots of fun stuff and keep very busy at uni so I don't feel like watching the pennies is making a difference to my quality of life at all. This also means that I don't have to do paid work during termtime or holidays, so I can focus on getting a good classification in my degree, though I choose to work a little bit and will spend some of the summer working so that I can afford an exciting trip somewhere (haven't decided where yet this time after last summer's SE Asia extravaganza!) and so that I can save even more money for when I graduate. So I hope to have a nice healthy savings pot to offset my SLC debt.

So, particularly if your income stays below £25k, you really don't have to worry about finding money to give to your son to go to uni at all; the only issue will be the drop in your income from when he leaves school, I guess, but then that would happen anyway. I'm sure he would appreciate it if you saved up enough to cover some initial start-up costs like a laptop (very necessary nowadays!) and if you kept him well fed when he comes home in the holidays, and I'm sure that he wouldn't say no to any additional money you might want to give him, but my general point is that he should get plenty of money to cover his basic living costs given to him, and anything you might want to provide is an extra, so please don't worry about it too much. It will be good for him to learn to budget and earn some of his own money anyway

I'm sorry this is so ridiculously long - I thought about sending it to cw in a PM but thought that other parents who are thinking about this might appreciate a student's-view account of the finance packages available as well. Hope someone finds it useful, anyway All the figures are off the top of my head but should be fairly accurate.

andromache_2

Just wanted to add, cw, that you seem like a wonderful concerned and helpful parent from your posts about wanting to help your DD with her budget and tiring schedule and your DS with going to uni. Your kids are very lucky :T

skint_chick

Hi everyone

I'd like to join as I want to reduce my outgoings, to get my debt reduced. My budget for 2009 is-

-food £1200
-petrol £600
-household items - toilet roll/cleaning/laundry £85
-pet supplies for hamster £10
-toiletries £40 - soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, shaving stuff for OH - i have tons of everything else stockpiled
-haircuts £48
-heating £700
-electric £300
-phone/mobile/internet/tv £720
-tv licence £139.50
-clothes/shoes £100
Total £3852.50

There's just the two of us and I haven't included mortgage, council tax, insurances and car tax - paid til Nov 09

bails

Andromache - respect to you :T What a helpful and informative post, I'm glad you didn't PM it. You are indeed one switched-on woman when it comes to your finances and studies, and you still leave room in your budget for travelling - what's not to like? Any thoughts on next year's trip? A couple of my friends just got back from Argentina (one of my (many) dream destinations) and it looked awesome! South America is more expensive than SE Asia of course...
Speaking of dreams, my Dream Pot is over the £200 mark now - 1% of the way there :j :rotfl:

Welcome Skint_Chick, budget looking good! It's great to have so many new challengers along ready for the new year! Can I ask if any of you are longtime lurkers or have just found us recently? Any more out there who want to join our little community? Come on in and pull up a comfy chair

The more I think about my savings the more I'm sure I want to offset them against my mortgage and then use the reduced monthly payments to overpay even more. I've wanted to start paying off my mortgage since before we got it so I'm really excited that I might be able to start now, even in this situation! It's amazing what we can manage when we really put our minds to it :T

cw18

andromache -- many thanks for the information from the viewpoint of a current student. every bit of information like this is a great help in being sure it's a dream I can convince him to follow :T

slowlyfading

:hello: everyone.
I'm going to try and work out a budget for next year - there's only me and I think its unfair that I'm currently on about £3200, when its just spending for me! So I'm going to try and cut it right now. Wish me luck! I'll be back later once I've worked it out
Hope everyone has a good day xx

bails

Good luck SF! Think what you can do with the money you save... x