Student Loan Repaid.... Still taking my money!

When I stopped mines, was pretty straight forward, SLC sent a notice to stop payments to your payroll department, seemed to work fine. I made the final payment by debit card as it was relatively small, rather than pay extra and wait 8 weeks for a refund.

Don't think the loan payment comes out before tax....
 
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Student Loans are a total mug's game and I really regret taking one out, and my folks regret encouraging me to do it. None of us knew exactly how it worked and the repayment system is DESIGNED to confuse the hell out of the self-employed to maximise interest. They have NO interest at all in helping you because the longer you go on the more interest they can pull out of you.

Here's a tip for anyone who is self-employed or soon to be SE and who has a Student Loan:

You only start making contributions (non-voluntary) once you're earning over 15k of **TAXABLE PROFITS** - **NOT TURNOVER**. Repeat - **NOT** turnover. And also NOT non-taxable profits. What this means is that for many of us, when you start out as self-employed it can take several years before you're really profitable and doing well - hell - 15k of taxable profit is GREAT for most SE people during their first year or three. (Remember, this is AFTER all expenses have been taken). During this time you're quite likely to stay under 15k of TAXABLE PROFIT, even if your turnover might well be way more than that. During this time, you won't be making ANY non-voluntary contributions. NONE. And... here's the kicker! The SLC will NOT call you up or write to you to recommend you make voluntary payments to keep things moving along nicely. They just sit tight and say nothing. So if, like me and many others, you simply don't realise this, you can end up not making ANY contributions for many years. During this time you'll be accruing a LOT of interest. I mean a LOT. Yes, this is a relatively "cheap" loan, but it's still not "cheap cheap". It all stacks up and believe me, after 4 years it can ADD UP seriously.

So - my advice - if you're self-employed - talk to an accountant - get some advice and work out if you're going to be making involuntary payments or not. And whatever you do, keep up with the interest and pay it off! Don't just ignore it because everyone's telling you it's the "cheapest loan you'll ever have" - because that's NOT TRUE AT ALL.

Now, obviously, if you really know what you're doing and are up on this then you won't be in this position. I'm not a stupid person and I consider myself very careful with money, but it's VERY EASY to get into a mess with SL when everyone's attitude towards it seems to be to just forget about it and let it deal with itself over time, and it's often a huge hassle to even be able to talk to someone there who isn't a complete muppet.

Debt is debt, small or large.

Hope that helps someone who is/will soon be in a similar position.
 
How does one go about checking how much they have left on their student loan? I've largely ignored mine for years, and have no idea which address my statements will have been going to (if any!).
 
Pestilence said:
How does one go about checking how much they have left on their student loan? I've largely ignored mine for years, and have no idea which address my statements will have been going to (if any!).
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Every year you get a statement (think it's July or August).

You can phone them up and they can tell you what is left. They track it on a yearly basis, however you can tell them your current financial year payments and they can calculate how much is left.

You should definately stay on top of it so you at least know how long it will take.
 
The same thing happened to me, had something like £2,200 in overpayments get taken from my payslips.
It took endless calls to finally get it sorted. They would tell me it was all fixed and then the money would still be taken the following month.

In the end I got the money back after god knows how long, but no interest on it!
 
I've changed jobs a couple of times in the last year and somewhere along the line whilst the money has been coming out my pay and going to SLC it's not been reflected in my latest statement.

Granted it is an interim statement so they know there's more info coming, problem is by my calculations I've got about £15 left on it so wanted it sorted so I didn't have the problem of over paying and then claiming it back.

Got all my payslips for last year and this year to date to send off but don't think it'll be done before next payday (2 weeks time) so will end up with at least one month overpaying, grr.

And yup loan repayments don't come out before tax, they are done after.
 
mothermachine said:
Student Loans are a total mug's game and I really regret taking one out, and my folks regret encouraging me to do it. .
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Surely its the most effective way to pay for education, bar bank of mum&dad?

I feel the pain of being SE though, I often jump from being SE to full time to contract and it's enough of a god-damn headache without the added hassle of these retards screwing it up at every opportunity. They even fined me £1000 once for not contributing after being SE even though I had been contributing for half a year through PAYE :rolleyes:
 
To contrast everyone's pain, I phoned up a few months before it was paid off, told them how much had been taken each month for the months they didnt have and they put the STOP order on. I then waited a month, nothing came out of my pay and I paid off the balance over the phone on debit card.

Got a letter saying probably all paid off, they need to wait till end of tax year when they get the money deducted from my pay then there might be a slight correction +/- to make
 
mothermachine said:
Call them up (during the week). Good luck. I hope you don't find yourself in the same situation I did.
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What happened?

rafster said:
Every year you get a statement (think it's July or August).

You can phone them up and they can tell you what is left. They track it on a yearly basis, however you can tell them your current financial year payments and they can calculate how much is left.

You should definately stay on top of it so you at least know how long it will take.
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Yeah -- I'm busy sorting out all loans/finances over the next year with a view to being debt-free very, very soon. Since I left Uni and moved away, I've just forgotten about the student loan, but still see the money coming out every month. I never notified them of any address changes etc, and having a look on the website I can't access the online statement portion as I haven't a clue what my reference ID etc. is. Will probably give them a call next week to see what I can garner.
 
Interested to see how this follows up. Keep us updated please? :)

I'm about to go into my third year, but will come out of it with enough to pay off a reasonable amount of it... Currently working out whether to keep it, or just pay off the amount I can...

Was up to this point thinking of keeping it, but hm, this is slightly throwing me...

kd
 
King Damager said:
Interested to see how this follows up. Keep us updated please? :)

I'm about to go into my third year, but will come out of it with enough to pay off a reasonable amount of it... Currently working out whether to keep it, or just pay off the amount I can...

Was up to this point thinking of keeping it, but hm, this is slightly throwing me...

kd
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If you can invest the money somewhere which pays higher than 1.5% APR then invest it. If you can't find somewhere that pays this then pay off the student loan.

Then, each year check the APR of your outstanding loan and work out whether you get a better return from savings or paying off the SLC.
 
Decided to just give them another call actually and they were most helpful.

Chap says they've received the extra info for last year from my other jobs so that's all up to date on their system, told them what I've paid this year and he's said he'll issue a stop notice and I just have to send in the payslips for this year so far.

Will have to wait until next payday as it's too close to it now for the stop to go through in time, he said it should all work but if for whatever reason the stop doesn't and I still get deducted in October to call them and they'll do it manually.

So seeming relatively painless so far.
 
Capn' $qu!ff said:
Like me he probably doesn't like being in debt regardless of how people on the whole look at it good debt or bad debt is still debt I've also paid off my Student loan hell I apparantly over paid by £200 which i got back a couple of months after the debt was paid.
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He paid if off before the FY end, nothing to do with extra payments.

SLC keep taking and it should stop once notified that the payments are complete.

You can get off your soapbox now.
 
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