Money Money Money

Posted by Colin Harvey Sep 30, 2009

It's one of those long (two hours plus) periods between induction lectures, so I'm where I've spent most of my free time in the last two days - in the library. It seems like an opportune time to blog.

Good news this morning -- it seems that the loveley, lovely, lovely people at Student Finance England haven't lost my paperwork after all. So I'm not going to have to re-start the process of getting my grant three months after I sent off Kate's P60 and our marriage certificate.

The process of how one is paid, and how much it involves sometimes seems to require a Cray Supercomputer. But if you're sad enough to want to know, read on:--

Every British Student gets two loans, one for tuition (which in my case is paid direct to the University so I can't even remember how much it is, I'm so uninterested in it). But I also get a Maintenence Loan of £3500.

Both of these loans have to be re-paid once I start earning £15000, at the rate of 9% of my earnings.

I clearly can't live on that --in fact I can't work out how even young students can, given that the Uni charges them £92 per week, or £2944 per year excluding food-- but because of my age and circumstances, I also qualify for a grant of £2900, and a bursary of £1200, bringing my net income to £7600 per academic year. It's not much, but it's net of all deductions which makes it's gross value about £8200, and as long as I keep working 16 hours a week, I also qualify for assistance from HMRC, which brings in another £625 a year, or £900 before tax. I can work for three months next summer, so I can top up my equivalent of £9100 with three months earnings that way. Which leaves the writing to pay for con attendance and direct costs, such as internet, phone and power.

At least, that's the theory.

More on how the theory translates into reality at a later date.