Discussion
So we don't take the "How much debt are you in?" thread off topic I thought we should start a new thread.
This has got me thinking, perhaps I really should start paying more back than the £120 off my salary each month. Anyone care to comment? Is it as simple as just phoning them up with a debit card?
>>> Edited by KITT on Monday 4th April 12:04
nervous said:
you might wanna look at the terms and cond's of your student loan, mine suddenly stooped being an ok think to have trickling out of my bank account, when like you have, recieved my yearly statement and realised that id paid little more than the interest. from memory, the rate of interest rockets after a certain amount of years, and they claw their 'investment' back that way. i went without fun until it was all gone.
student loans, what a great idea
This has got me thinking, perhaps I really should start paying more back than the £120 off my salary each month. Anyone care to comment? Is it as simple as just phoning them up with a debit card?
>>> Edited by KITT on Monday 4th April 12:04
yes, thats what i did. and request monthly statements. in fact anytime you can spare it, send them a tenner.
id get rid of it as soon as you can. forgive me if that sounds obvious, but since you probably were forced to take it in the first place it sucks doubley to be paying tall interest on it. and of course its up to you to remember that its no longer at the 'helpful' rate of 15 or whatever the incentivised rate was, they didnt tell me. and why should they?
bounce it to a card, an overdraft, a loan. the student loan people are very nice folks on the phone. its in scotland as memory serves. theyll be happy to help.
>> Edited by nervous on Monday 4th April 12:09
id get rid of it as soon as you can. forgive me if that sounds obvious, but since you probably were forced to take it in the first place it sucks doubley to be paying tall interest on it. and of course its up to you to remember that its no longer at the 'helpful' rate of 15 or whatever the incentivised rate was, they didnt tell me. and why should they?
bounce it to a card, an overdraft, a loan. the student loan people are very nice folks on the phone. its in scotland as memory serves. theyll be happy to help.
>> Edited by nervous on Monday 4th April 12:09
Just to be sure here, I was at uni from 1998 - 2001 which meant I took my loans (one for each year) out with "The Student Loan Company".
I thought it was an interest free loan but looking at my statement from last year I am being charged ~£15 interest a month! This is apparently inflation. I honestly can't remember how much I took out in total and I think I owe about £8k at the moment.
Guess a monthly statement might be a good idea so I can see exactly where I'm at. I'll dig the details out when I get home.
I thought it was an interest free loan but looking at my statement from last year I am being charged ~£15 interest a month! This is apparently inflation. I honestly can't remember how much I took out in total and I think I owe about £8k at the moment.
Guess a monthly statement might be a good idea so I can see exactly where I'm at. I'll dig the details out when I get home.
yes, thats the one. I'm fairly confident that the student loans company is the one we all had to take. and I'm sure that it was founded/ backed by the government. i had to take mine to be eligible to apply for funding and council tax relief. neither of which i was awarded after application. but I'm sure they didn't know i didn't qualify before i applied. I'm sure of it 
15 quid a month is a small rate of interest on 8k though isn't it? maybe you're still at the period where the rate is good. didn't mean to panic you, i just know that mine changed all of a sudden and my payments were becoming ineffective. and my studies ran me to nearly 50k (7 years
) so that hike in interest was a really big kick in the pants. no-ones fault by own though, i forget the rate of interest changed.
15 quid a month is a small rate of interest on 8k though isn't it? maybe you're still at the period where the rate is good. didn't mean to panic you, i just know that mine changed all of a sudden and my payments were becoming ineffective. and my studies ran me to nearly 50k (7 years
) so that hike in interest was a really big kick in the pants. no-ones fault by own though, i forget the rate of interest changed.Mine is a Student Loans Company one, now sold off to some other mob.
The way I see it is thus. My Student Loan is 3.something% but my mortgage is 5%. Any money I have in my account gets taken into consideration with my mortgage (calculated daily). So my money is better off against my mortgage than it is against paying off the Student Loan earlier (only 1 year out of 7 to go now anyway).
Don't know if that makes sense. My reckoning is to work on paying off the stuff that has the highest interest rates first.
The way I see it is thus. My Student Loan is 3.something% but my mortgage is 5%. Any money I have in my account gets taken into consideration with my mortgage (calculated daily). So my money is better off against my mortgage than it is against paying off the Student Loan earlier (only 1 year out of 7 to go now anyway).
Don't know if that makes sense. My reckoning is to work on paying off the stuff that has the highest interest rates first.
Scary things to have around your neck! I'm going to pay mine off when I move to the property ladder and mortage.
For details of paying off early: www.slc.co.uk/noframe/lr/sss/repayov.html
Mine comes out at about £60 per month PAYE but that will increase in about 2 months - new job, bigger salary.
Am a bit concverned about this jump in interest rates being mentioned however - must check out my terms and conditions again!
Phil
For details of paying off early: www.slc.co.uk/noframe/lr/sss/repayov.html
Mine comes out at about £60 per month PAYE but that will increase in about 2 months - new job, bigger salary.
Am a bit concverned about this jump in interest rates being mentioned however - must check out my terms and conditions again!
Phil
KITT said:
I thought it was an interest free loan but looking at my statement from last year I am being charged ~£15 interest a month! This is apparently inflation.
AFAIK, if it's from the Student Loans company it has never been interest free, only "interest at the rate of inflation".
As such, it's not a Bad Debt, as the loaned amount is not "gaining value", as the amount you'll owe will, in theory, buy you as much as it would've last year, and the year before, etc.
If it was 0% lending, then over the course of 15 years or however long it'll take for some people to pay off their debts, the value of the loaned amount would drop seriously - imagine if you'd borrowed £3k in the mid-80s, and what it would buy you then, and what it would now.
The fact it's not 0% lending is a good thing, as otherwise the devaluation would have to be further subsidised by the government/tax payer...
I've never heard of any loans from the SLC having their interest rate increase suddenly though - only from banks.
Rob.
Rob - yup sounds about right - from the SLC website:
"The interest rate is linked to the rate of inflation. The interest rate from 1st September 2004 to 31st August 2005 will be 2.6% Interest accrues from the day you receive the first instalment of your loan."
There should be no leap in repayment unless a corresponding salary jump had occured too.
Nervous, I'd check if I were you as a post 01.09.98 loan should not have increased dramatically.
Phil
"The interest rate is linked to the rate of inflation. The interest rate from 1st September 2004 to 31st August 2005 will be 2.6% Interest accrues from the day you receive the first instalment of your loan."
There should be no leap in repayment unless a corresponding salary jump had occured too.
Nervous, I'd check if I were you as a post 01.09.98 loan should not have increased dramatically.
Phil
nervous said:Are you sure on this? I don't recall reading anything that said the interest was going to suddenly increase from 3.x% to 15% after 3 years
15 quid a month is a small rate of interest on 8k though isn't it? maybe you're still at the period where the rate is good. didn't mean to panic you, i just know that mine changed all of a sudden and my payments were becoming ineffective.
Trouble is I only get a statement once a year which I guess will be due this month. I really need to find all the paperwork and have a good read as I'm in the process of buying a flat at the moment!
again, please forgive me if Ive panicked anyone. i cannot remember the period after which it changed. i got so used to seeing the 120 quid leaving my account every month i sort of stopped noticing it. not that i could afford to ignore it, i just conditioned myself to not feel bitter about it every month cos it wasn't helping me. then after a few years i caught out of the corner of my eye that id made little or no difference to the amount owed. it just made better sense to ship it elsewhere.
again, they're super nice people, call em and find out. it may well be after ages that it goes up. i was working so hard to pay off all my debts i sort of lost track of time for about five years >eek<
again, they're super nice people, call em and find out. it may well be after ages that it goes up. i was working so hard to pay off all my debts i sort of lost track of time for about five years >eek<
I made my last payment this month.... So thats another £44 a month to squander I've so far worked on a similar theory, that if I'm only paying ~3% on my student loan and I have some spare cash, I might as well put that in a savings account because I can earn more there than I lose in interest on the loan.
Is it that simple or is there a flaw in my thinking?
The idea that the interest rate increases after time is also concerning, though I've never heard anything about this before...
Is it that simple or is there a flaw in my thinking?
The idea that the interest rate increases after time is also concerning, though I've never heard anything about this before...
my loans were taken out before that date. perhaps thats why the rate changed. mine definitely did not stay at a friendly rate of interest.
i wish it had cos i had to work triple time for ages to get rid of it. and in a lot of ways i still have it round my neck cos other loans have been absorbed into my mortgage etc as a result of generating brief moments of >ahem< petrol based happiness during my period of no access to sunlight.
i hope that it doesnt change for you, cos it sucked for me.
edited to add, plus as someone pointed out, my earnings increased dramatically cos i went from not having a job to erm..having a lot of jobs. so that wouldnt have helped with the payment situation. youre right, as you earn more, they want more. and it seems that the early loans like mine increased in interest over time too. sorry if i made you spill your tea people, lets hope that yours stays constant.
>> Edited by nervous on Monday 4th April 12:45
i wish it had cos i had to work triple time for ages to get rid of it. and in a lot of ways i still have it round my neck cos other loans have been absorbed into my mortgage etc as a result of generating brief moments of >ahem< petrol based happiness during my period of no access to sunlight.
i hope that it doesnt change for you, cos it sucked for me.
edited to add, plus as someone pointed out, my earnings increased dramatically cos i went from not having a job to erm..having a lot of jobs. so that wouldnt have helped with the payment situation. youre right, as you earn more, they want more. and it seems that the early loans like mine increased in interest over time too. sorry if i made you spill your tea people, lets hope that yours stays constant.
>> Edited by nervous on Monday 4th April 12:45
Nervous, what's your definition of a big jump?
I always considered the interest rate to be about 3% (www.slc.co.uk says it is 2.6%) and have been following the crazylegs theory of pay off everything else cos this is the cheapest loan you are ever going to get.
With them selling the loans to muppet international though anything could have happened.
It was never as low as 0.3% as far as I remember.
If it is anything like 15% then we have all been lied to in a <b>big way</b>.
On hold with SLC now......come on you gits answer the phone
>> Edited by stigproducts on Monday 4th April 13:01
I always considered the interest rate to be about 3% (www.slc.co.uk says it is 2.6%) and have been following the crazylegs theory of pay off everything else cos this is the cheapest loan you are ever going to get.
With them selling the loans to muppet international though anything could have happened.
It was never as low as 0.3% as far as I remember.
If it is anything like 15% then we have all been lied to in a <b>big way</b>.
On hold with SLC now......come on you gits answer the phone
>> Edited by stigproducts on Monday 4th April 13:01
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