'Don't pay your kids tuition fees upfront' Discussion Area

melancholly

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Not strictly true I think. One university (forget which one) made a headline a couple of weeks ago for stating that they did not believe it was fair to charge a four year course at 4 x £9,000 = £36,000 so they capped it at £27,000. Not sure how they spread that out ...

it was a couple of scottish universities, so not under the same system as the english unis. pus they have no details yet on their websites about it (it's Aberdeen and Heriot-Watt that I heard of doing this - but it appears to be a headline grabbing statement without the details of how it works.... not ideal!)

setmefree2

kayr wrote: »

If son#2 does the course I think he may, he could potentially earn bucket loads of money. Or, given his personality, I could envisage him working for a good cause for very little money. So the decision is not at all clear. Doing the sums and gazing into our crystal ball will keep us occupied for some time.

It's not easy and I'm not sure the tone of the MSE missives are helping me. The missives have a political feel to them. They make me feel like there is an agenda and that makes me worry that the information being given is in some way tainted!? Maybe I'm wrong but it has definitely crossed my mind.

It doesn't help that MSE ignores most of the points I raise. It really makes me wonder why I bother to post on this site......(many of the boards on MSE have a "One flew over the cuckoos nest" feel to them these days anyways lol )

but,hey, kay - chatting with you has defintely helped me over the last few months. It's good to know there are people out there in the same boat....thx.

setmefree2

kayr wrote: »

Doing the sums and gazing into our crystal ball will keep us occupied for some time.

Well I don't have a crystal ball but I do have a rear view mirror and if I could have paid a lump sum and avoided a tax of 9% on most of my income for 30 years, I'd have paid the lump sum!

melancholly

setmefree2 wrote: »

Well I don't have a crystal ball but I do have a rear view mirror and if I could have paid a lump sum and avoided a tax of 9% on most of my income for 30 years, I'd have paid the lump sum!

just to be a pedant, 9% of your income above threshold (makes a big difference to the equation!)

setmefree2

melancholly wrote: »

just to be a pedant, 9% of your income above threshold (makes a big difference to the equation!)

I'm not understanding your point? Which equation? £21k is nothing in London or the SE. It's what a bin man earns - if that's your point!?

9% of a SE wage is a great deal of money - over 20 to 30 years it's a huge amount of money. The £21k threshold is small change in the long run.

setmefree2

From the MSE article.

However, if you're seriously cash rich, so you can repay your potentially high earning child's student loan and provide a mortgage deposit and a car without needing to borrow yourself, then it's not such a problem.

Personally, I think my boys can buy their own car.... I think we'll have done our bit by then!

We don't want to make life to easy for them do we?

setmefree2

From the MSE article.

However, if you're seriously cash rich, so you can repay your potentially high earning child's student loan and provide a mortgage deposit and a car without needing to borrow yourself, then it's not such a problem.

Define "seriously cash rich".

Cash for:-

• Tution Fees and maintenance
• Children's home deposits
• Emergency saving fund
• Retirement cash pot

Have I got it covered?

melancholly

setmefree2 wrote: »

I'm not understanding your point? Which equation? £21k is nothing in London or the SE. It's what a bin man earns - if that's your point!?

9% of a SE wage is a great deal of money - over 20 to 30 years it's a huge amount of money. The £21k threshold is small change in the long run.

yes it's a huge amount of money over 30 years but it isn't taken from total gross pay. that's the only point i wanted to make since it has been clear on a number of threads on here that plenty of people reading them still think that the repayments are taken as a proportion of total salary. they aren't. that's all i wanted to indicate! it's worth mentioning again and again because it is often missed by people who are new to student finance. don't interpret everything as full blown attack on your moral principles or views on life.... it's just making it clear for anyone else who is still bothering to trudge through the same points that everyone has been making for the best part of a year.

Oldernotwiser

setmefree2 wrote: »

I'm not understanding your point? Which equation? £21k is nothing in London or the SE. It's what a bin man earns - if that's your point!?

9% of a SE wage is a great deal of money - over 20 to 30 years it's a huge amount of money. The £21k threshold is small change in the long run.

There are enormous numbers of young graduates who would give their eye teeth to earn over £21,000 - even in the south east.

tyllwyd

I'm not a fan of the new loan system, but I'd agree with the point that the threshold of £21K is not insignificant. My OH is a higher tax payer (just about!) and we'd certainly notice the difference if he was paying 9% tax on all his income as against the slice above £21K. And I'm a graduate who is working part-time after having children, and I don't earn over £21K (and since I'm self-employed, a student loan would be a good reason for me to make sure I don't earn enough to go over that threshold but that's a whole other discussion).

The bigger question for me is in the future - at the moment £21K is a relatively high threshold. The promise is that as wages increase, the threshold will also be increased, but that isn't guaranteed. Keeping the threshold at the same figure over a period of time is the most obvious way for the government to get back more money from taxpayers with student loans.