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[ChristopherP]

I'm going to try and come out of uni with at least £6k + interest in the ISA... Perhaps spend a grand updating this machine or something... and maybe borrow some of the loan for next years car insurance if i cant afford it...

What i will do with the money i dont know... New car? Maybe i will buy my Volvo T5 ... Maybe i will put it towards a deposit on a house. Who knows.

i SHOULD be OK... it really will be a case of wait and see. I hope that i can live comfortably

I have an interview @ Sainsbury's in Cambridge on the 9th of Sept - hopefully they will accept my Dual Contract that would be really cool - work at two different stores depending on where i am.

 

[Ian]

I'm really confused Chris, I have to admit - how much do you get as a loan, and how much do you have to pay for fees/halls etc...? We got about 3k to pay for everything (halls were over 2k alone), so it seems as if you have much more this year - no-one I knew could afford to invest or buy dSLRs etc?

Your idea to save what you don't need in an ISA is a sound idea, although there will be some costs that you really won't expect perhaps so be sure to keep enough in your bank account Freshers week costs quite a bit, lots of going out and meeting with people from your new halls and course, then books can cost ~£250/yr, food should only be minimal if catered or around ~ £30/wk if not.

I'm positive that you can live comfortably on that amount I can't quite believe how much you get from them now if you are thinking about getting a car with the spare Mind you, it's good that they upped it from 3k as almost everyone from my year is around 2k in debt in overdrafts just through living costs and we all graduated this year.

 

[ChristopherP]

Right...

Fees:
Tuition is £3,000 per year
Accommodation is £340 a month on a 44 week tennancy

Loan:
I get £3,000 (per year) to cover the Tuition, this gets paid directly to the university, i never see this.
I get roughly £4500 (per year) to cover maintenance/living costs.

But...

My parents are paying for my accommodation so that dosen't need to come out my maintenance loan... and i should have £260 a month on top of that.

My halls are non catered and non cleaned so i need to do everything.

£30 a week sounds good... but Cambridge is the most expensive place to live i read!!

If i can live on £30 a week for food, that leaves a little bit over the same again for going out and other living costs... without needing to touch my loan.

I will come out of uni about £22,200 in debt plus interest at about 3.2% or whatever it is. So maybe a thousand pounds more than that? Oh yeah, and plus whetever other debts i have on seperate accounts...

Whether i have £9k of that in an ISA by the end of uni who knows...

I read that its not a good idea to pay off your student loan as soon as you can simply because its such a good deal its worth keeping the money for whatever you need and paying the minimum amount off p/m.

 

[Ian]

Ah right that makes sense! As the accomodation is paid for my your parents you should have plenty there to live on

 

[psd99]

good idea there Postill

I think it could work
all that working in Sainsburys was it?
really paid off init!


If I could turn back time I would do what you are going to do with your loan
really sound idea

glad you are doing it

beware of unexpected costs

 

[ChristopherP]

Well i just hope i get this job in Cambs - with some decent hours.

Ideally i wanted to not work weekends, just evenings, but i have found that a) they need people on weekends and b) lectures go on until 9pm!

So it looks like i will be working my ass off on the weekends. Damnit.

The parents have said that i have to save every penny of the £3000 of the maintenance loan i was going to ISA otherwise they will have it. Hmm.

 

[cirianz]

I was extraordinarily lucky. I graduated in the last year that we had free education over here. having seen how things have changed since user-pays became the name of the game then I really am sad. Regardless of how you argue about who ought to be paying for the education. In practical terms user pays has meant that Business & accounting student levels have gone through the roof, & many more obscure subjects have had to close down papers.
No one can afford to end up $100K in debt for a degree that isn't going to pay enough to service the loan, what this means in the long term fro the field of human knowledge... who knows. I suppose some would say who cares.
Also, of course, the "Brain Drain" Is simply a fact of life over here now. For the most part NZ simply doesn't pay high enough wages in a large enought number of jobs for graduates to live & service their loans. Most graduates end up going to Australia, the US or the UK to work.

Would I've been able to afford to to to university if I was just finishing high school now? I really couldn't say. I have an abhorrence of debt that would certainly have influenced any decisions.
Would I've studued the subjects I did (psychology, Anthropology, philosophy, phenomenology of religion, etc. Humanities as in the study of the human animal ) definitely not. There is no significant income in most of what i studied. I certainly could not have justified getting into that much debt to study subjects that would not generate future income. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Who benefits from me having studied the subjects I did? Having learned the things I've learned & having gained the insights that they've given me? Me personally? Humanity as a whole? Or is this all just useless information that has no place in modern society & should not be bothered with by any except a few dusty accademics in even dustier libraries?
How do we place a value on human knowledge?
Who knows. Me? I have opinions, but no answers.
But I think that we may be losing more than we know
& only the long term will tell.

I suppose that's my rant.

 

[TriplexDread]

I didnt think you had to pay back the load until you were in full time work?

Does the interest start frm day one, or after you leave and go into work?

 

[ChristopherP]

You only start paying from when you earn more than £15k a year, and its a set percentage of the amount over that.

Not sure about the interest to be honest... i'll look into it at some point

 

[Anon_F]

I was counted as a mature student as i had at the time just hit 25.
The bonus was the college fees were a lot lower for me as a mature student, but as i applied for my student grant at 24 i got a higher grant.

So in fact i was reasonably well off during college.