Financial help for Open University degree

bach230

I am hoping to enrol on a degree course later this year to start off my goal of getting a BA in Humanities with Music/Classical Civilisation. I work 35 hours and my husband works approx 40+ (7am-6pm mon-fri with some additional weekend work). Unfortunately it is not possible for me to be able to afford to pay the fees myself for the individual courses - 6 courses of 60 points to complete a 360 point degree, 5 courses are £630 each and 1 course is £1045.
I tried previously to get financial help through the OU itself but with my husband and i working it wasn't possible to get much help at all.
I'm quite prepared to either quit my job or to do part-time work whilst i study for the degree if it means i can get more help with funding as well as help with living as we part-own a house and have bills to pay, but i just wonder if anyone has any experience of this or if anyone knows where i can get any financial help at all.

Thanks

Oldernotwiser

bach230 wrote: »

I am hoping to enrol on a degree course later this year to start off my goal of getting a BA in Humanities with Music/Classical Civilisation. I work 35 hours and my husband works approx 40+ (7am-6pm mon-fri with some additional weekend work). Unfortunately it is not possible for me to be able to afford to pay the fees myself for the individual courses - 6 courses of 60 points to complete a 360 point degree, 5 courses are £630 each and 1 course is £1045.
I tried previously to get financial help through the OU itself but with my husband and i working it wasn't possible to get much help at all.
I'm quite prepared to either quit my job or to do part-time work whilst i study for the degree if it means i can get more help with funding as well as help with living as we part-own a house and have bills to pay, but i just wonder if anyone has any experience of this or if anyone knows where i can get any financial help at all.

Thanks

You would be very foolish to leave your job to study with the OU as you must obviously earn more than the £630 that each course costs! Because the OU is, by definition, part time you cannot get any help with maintenace as you would with a traditional university and this is true of all part time study. Even if you went to a bricks and mortar university and studied full time,the funding package would be considerably less than a full time, minimum wage job.

Do you know that you can open a budget account with the OU and spread the costs across the year? - a monthly payment might make things easier. You might also like to consider posting your SOA on the DFW Board as the people on there are very good at suggesting ways in which you can make savings on household expenses, certainly enough to cover £50/60 per month.

As a final thought, do you know that you can use Tesco Clubcard points to pay for OU fees?

bach230

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

You would be very foolish to leave your job to study with the OU as you must obviously earn more than the £630 that each course costs! Because the OU is, by definition, part time you cannot get any help with maintenace as you would with a traditional university and this is true of all part time study. Even if you went to a bricks and mortar university and studied full time,the funding package would be considerably less than a full time, minimum wage job.

Do you know that you can open a budget account with the OU and spread the costs across the year? - a monthly payment might make things easier. You might also like to consider posting your SOA on the DFW Board as the people on there are very good at suggesting ways in which you can make savings on household expenses, certainly enough to cover £50/60 per month.

As a final thought, do you know that you can use Tesco Clubcard points to pay for OU fees?

I had heard about the budget account with the OU but am a bit on the fearful side as to whether it would work - my husband is quite a spender so i'd be constantly worried every month as to whether i had enough money to put towards the course!
As i'm not a regular poster on here can you please explain what "SOA" and "DFW" are?
I was not aware that you could use Tesco Clubcard points to pay for OU fees - i'll have to look into that

MrsManda

bach230 wrote: »

I had heard about the budget account with the OU but am a bit on the fearful side as to whether it would work - my husband is quite a spender so i'd be constantly worried every month as to whether i had enough money to put towards the course!
As i'm not a regular poster on here can you please explain what "SOA" and "DFW" are?

SOA i believe is Statement of Accounts or Affairs (ingoings/outgoings). DFW is Debt Free Wannabes. They may be able to help you work out how to limit your outgoings so that you can factor in the costs involved with studying. As ONW says, you'd be foolish to give up a job if you are going to study through the OU.

Is your husband supportive of your desire to study? If so, he should be able to curb his spending a little to allow you to realise your dream. DFW should be able to help you set a budget but I think you need to have agreement between yourself and your husband.

bach230

MrsManda wrote: »

SOA i believe is Statement of Accounts or Affairs (ingoings/outgoings). DFW is Debt Free Wannabes. They may be able to help you work out how to limit your outgoings so that you can factor in the costs involved with studying. As ONW says, you'd be foolish to give up a job if you are going to study through the OU.

Is your husband supportive of your desire to study? If so, he should be able to curb his spending a little to allow you to realise your dream. DFW should be able to help you set a budget but I think you need to have agreement between yourself and your husband.

Thanks for that MrsManda. I'll have a look on DFW to see if anyone can help with my outgoings etc.
My husband is supportive of my desire to study. He realises that i am not happy in what i am currently doing and knows that i would probably be much happier in a music career and that the main thing i need is a degree to help me realise my dream, or knows that it is at least something i feel i should have done after college.
I must say that over the last few weeks or so he has started to change a little with regard to spending - i have my own account as well as a joint account with him and my own isa and have now started putting money away in my own account as i have things coming up in the next few months for my car but i believe that i could be able to pay for the course with the money i've started putting away for myself.

Thanks again MrsManda

mum2one

http://www3.open.ac.uk/coursefinance/

Thats the link from Open Uni, you put in your incomes etc and it calculates whether you can have any financial help.

If you cant the Open Uni do there own budget account, the interest is low, and say ur on a 9mth course think it is paid over 8 monthss.

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/browse.aspx?N=4294966209&bid=HLearning
Thats the link to the page for Tesco clubcard, you need to make sure that ur name is on the clubcard vouchers

Every £10 of Tesco vocuhers =£40 of Open Uni vouchers

May be worth spending a quiet hr going through all ur incomes + outgoings (SOA = Statement of Affairs),

Forget to say congratulations on wanting to go back I started a degree course 2 yrs ago, aiming for BA Hons in Business.

There is a link on the debt free boards for a statement of affairs, and the best link (cant find) make sense of cards.

Voyager2002

bach230 wrote: »

My husband is supportive of my desire to study. He realises that i am not happy in what i am currently doing and knows that i would probably be much happier in a music career and that the main thing i need is a degree to help me realise my dream, or knows that it is at least something i feel i should have done after college.

I do suggest you get some impartial careers advice: an academic degree is not usually that much help in obtaining a music career (obviously depending what sort of music career). However, many thousands of people have found an OU degree an enjoyable and worthwhile experience for its own sake, and have found that it changed their lives for the better in ways that they had not expected. So don't be put off, but don't start it with unrealistic expectations.

mum2one

Me again, found a couple more links, even if at the mo the Open Uni is not pratical for financial reasons these may help you plan better (all links off this site)

http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html
Thats the one that does a full financial statement, one thing I would say is be totally honest, (I know that sounds daft, but sometimes we feel quilty over that credit card or the amount spent on x,y,z).

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning#bplanner

Thats the budget planner that is on the site, may help.

Once youve done ur SOA, put it up, and people will help suggest ways of cuting money, usually painlessly!!
x

surfsister

it would be too late to give up your job anyway as they go on the previous tax year which will be based on your full time earnings.

Could you do just one 60 credit unit a year to keep costs down. Also the clubcard voucher scheme is good if you shop at tescos as £2.50 worth of clubcard coupons give you £10 off fees. It is easy to pick up points as petrol has double points at the moment and if you join their clubs they zend you special offers to get more points. eg buy £2.00 of veg ger 50 points. Good luck anyway. I'm a year into a full time degree and it's great.

Oldernotwiser

surfsister wrote: »

it would be too late to give up your job anyway as they go on the previous tax year which will be based on your full time earnings.

Could you do just one 60 credit unit a year to keep costs down. Also the clubcard voucher scheme is good if you shop at tescos as £2.50 worth of clubcard coupons give you £10 off fees. It is easy to pick up points as petrol has double points at the moment and if you join their clubs they zend you special offers to get more points. eg buy £2.00 of veg ger 50 points. Good luck anyway. I'm a year into a full time degree and it's great.

It would be extremely difficult for someone to do more than 60 credits a year and hold down a full time job!

KT1985

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

It would be extremely difficult for someone to do more than 60 credits a year and hold down a full time job!

Totally agree with this. I have done 60 credits per year for the past 2 years, and am thinking about doing 120 next year full time, mainly cos I am mad :rotfl:

Back to OP, you need to know what you are going to do with it at the end- get advice on whether a career in what you propose is feasible.

personally, I think that you would be mad to give up your job- keep it and study part time.