Every week, we pull together the most relevant stories for your personal finances.

Summary

🎓 Results day is here - if your child's off to uni, here's how to plan around the loan gap

🏦 Should you overpay your mortgage or invest instead? Here's what actually matters

📅 The Autumn Budget date is confirmed for 28 October - here's what's already flagged to change

🗣️ This week we asked a coach: My daughter's just got her results and is off to uni in September - the loan doesn't cover everything, so how much should I actually be giving her each month?

‍🎓 Results day is here - if your child's off to uni, here's how to plan around the loan gap

For students starting this September, the maximum tuition fee has risen to £9,790 a year, and maintenance loans now max out at £9,118 (living at home), £10,830 (away from home, outside London), or £14,135 (away from home, in London) - with the loan amount tapering as household income rises. But the most useful number might be this: the latest National Student Money Survey found the average gap between what the loan provides and what it actually costs to live as a student is £502 a month, while average parental contributions have actually fallen to a survey-low £146 a month.

🤔 What this means for you‍

The maintenance loan system assumes that as household income rises, parents can make up more of the difference themselves - which is why the loan tapers for higher earners. But the same survey found that's not really playing out in practice: contributions from "middle income" parents (roughly £35,000-£45,000 household income) have collapsed from £235 to £98 a month, because these families get neither the maximum loan nor generous bursaries, yet the system still assumes they can fill the gap. In reality, that shortfall often lands on the student instead - working more hours, cutting spending, or relying on more expensive borrowing.

If you're a parent trying to plan ahead, it's worth working out the real gap now rather than being surprised by it in October: take the loan instalment, subtract rent and a realistic estimate of food, bills and travel, and see what's actually left over each month. Decide whether you'll top up monthly, termly, or with a lump sum - monthly is often easier to budget for on both sides, and reduces the temptation to overspend in the first flush of a new term.

On the loan itself, it's worth reframing it for a worried 18-year-old: it behaves far more like a graduate tax than a normal debt. Repayments are 9% of income above £25,000 a year, whatever's left is written off after a set number of years, and it doesn't appear on a credit file. The size of the loan matters less than what the monthly repayment will actually feel like once they're working - and it's genuinely designed to flex with what they go on to earn.

One more thing worth knowing this week specifically: results week is also when banks compete hardest for new student customers, with the best interest-free overdrafts, cash bonuses and perks of the year - worth a quick comparison now rather than leaving it until term starts, since the strongest offers tend to fade fast.

‍Not sure how much you can comfortably give your child each month? A Bippit coach can help you work through the numbers and plan for the gap.‍

‍🏦 Should you overpay your mortgage or invest instead? Here's what actually matters

With the Bank of England base rate held at 3.75% for a fifth consecutive time, and the best five-year fixed mortgage rates currently sitting around 4.48-4.65%, a lot of homeowners are weighing up whether spare cash is better used overpaying their mortgage or invested instead. It's a live question again this week too, with mortgage rates ticking up for the first time in months as Middle East tensions resurfaced - a squeeze for anyone coming off an older, much cheaper fixed deal.

‍🤔 What this means for you

The simplest way to think about it: your mortgage rate is effectively a guaranteed return. Every pound you overpay saves you that rate in interest, with total certainty. Investing offers the potential for a higher return over the long run, but nothing is guaranteed, and the value of investments can fall as well as rise. As a rough rule of thumb, if your mortgage rate is higher than what you could reasonably expect from investing or saving after tax, overpaying tends to win on the numbers; if your rate is lower - as it was for many people who fixed a few years ago below 3% - investing can come out ahead over time, though never with certainty.

With today's best rates sitting around 4.5-4.65%, this is genuinely closer than it's been in a while, which means it's worth looking beyond just the headline rate. A few things are easy to overlook: make sure you've got an emergency fund in place first, since overpaying locks money away that you might need at short notice. Check whether you're getting your full employer pension match, and consider paying in more if you're a higher-rate taxpayer - pension tax relief is one of the few genuinely guaranteed boosts available, and often beats mortgage overpayment on the maths alone.

There's also a non-financial side worth being honest about: plenty of people simply value being mortgage-free, and the peace of mind that brings, more than a theoretical extra return from investing - and that's a perfectly reasonable reason to overpay even when the numbers are close. If you're coming up to the end of a very low fixed rate soon, that remortgage conversation is often the more urgent one - worth having with a broker a few months ahead rather than waiting until renewal day.

‍Worth knowing:

Most fixed-rate mortgages let you overpay up to 10% of the outstanding balance each year without any penalty - but go beyond that on many deals and you can trigger an early repayment charge that wipes out the benefit. Always check your own allowance before making a large extra payment.

📅 The Autumn Budget date is confirmed for 28 October - here's what's already flagged to change

Chancellor John Healey has confirmed the Autumn Budget will land on Wednesday 28 October 2026. While the full details will only be set out on the day, alongside a full OBR forecast, several changes have already been flagged: the cash ISA allowance is set to fall from £20,000 to £12,000 for under-65s from April 2027, unused pension pots are set to start counting toward inheritance tax from 2027/28, and a new "mansion tax" council tax surcharge is planned on homes worth over £2 million from April 2028.

🤔 What this means for you

None of this needs action today - these are trailed changes, not policy yet, and full details could still shift by the time the Budget itself lands. But each comes with a real future date, which makes it worth planning around rather than being caught out later.

The ISA change is the one most likely to affect an ordinary reader: if you regularly use your full £20,000 ISA allowance for cash savings, 2026/27 is the last full tax year you'll be able to do that before the under-65 cash ISA allowance drops to £12,000. Worth bearing in mind if you were planning to build up cash savings inside an ISA over the next year or so.

The pension change is more significant for estate planning: currently, unused pension pots generally sit outside your estate for inheritance tax purposes, which is why some people deliberately spend other assets first and leave pension savings until last, to pass on more tax-efficiently. From 2027/28, pensions are set to be pulled into the normal inheritance tax calculation like other assets - so if your estate is likely to be affected by inheritance tax, it's worth revisiting any plans that were built around the current rules well before the change takes effect.

The mansion tax surcharge only affects owners of homes worth over £2 million, so it won't be relevant to most readers - but worth knowing if it applies to you, since it would sit on top of your existing council tax band rather than replacing it.

‍Not sure how these upcoming changes could affect your finances? Speak to your Bippit coach to understand what they could mean for your plans and what’s worth keeping on your radar ahead of the Budget.

Ask a coach

"My daughter's just got her results and is off to uni in September - the loan doesn't cover everything, so how much should I actually be giving her each month?"

This is one of the most common conversations we have at this time of year, and there's no single "right" number - but there is a much better way to arrive at one than picking a figure and hoping for the best.

Start by building a simple monthly budget together: on one side, her maintenance loan instalment plus any part-time or term-time earnings; on the other, rent, food, bills and a realistic amount for socialising. Whatever's left over is the actual gap you're deciding whether to fill. It's worth adding a small buffer on top for one-off costs like books, a deposit, or travel home, rather than treating those as a surprise later in the term.

Be honest with yourself about what you can afford without derailing your own finances - particularly your emergency fund and your own pension contributions, which shouldn't take a back seat to funding this. It's also completely healthy for her to cover some of the gap herself through part-time work; it doesn't have to all come from you.

My suggestion? Agree on the number together, review it after the first term once you both know what things actually cost in practice, and don't be afraid to adjust it. And if you'd like help finding a figure that works for your household without putting your own plans at risk, that's exactly what we're here for.

Questions (to ask your coach)

My child's maintenance loan doesn't cover their rent - how do we work out a fair monthly top-up without stretching our own budget too far?

I've got some spare cash each month - would I be better off overpaying my mortgage or investing it, given my own numbers?

I use my full cash ISA allowance every year - what should I be doing differently before the allowance drops in April 2027?