Student loan re-payment

alx said:
I do wonder what they could actually do if you refused to pay whilst living abroad.

Obviously it would cause a lot of a problems if you ever moved back to the UK, but if you never did what could they realistically do?
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As I said they send threatening letters to your parents and all old contact addresses. Moreover they will work with other authorities to get the repayments. I can imagine this is easier within Europe than out.
 
My gf finished uni 4 years ago and has £10k debt approx. She has been earning over the threshold but SLC have not been in contact or arranged her repayments. Should she get in touch with them to sort it out because interest will be building on it right? Or should she leave it and wait until they get in touch with her?
 
Beerbaron said:
I paid mine off last year. Still no letter from HMRC confirming it.
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As long as you're not paying it off any more, do you need to get a letter confirming it? Also wouldn't the letter come from SLC rather than HMRC, in which case make sure they have your current address details.
 
mOdO said:
My gf finished uni 4 years ago and has £10k debt approx. She has been earning over the threshold but SLC have not been in contact or arranged her repayments. Should she get in touch with them to sort it out because interest will be building on it right? Or should she leave it and wait until they get in touch with her?
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Yes definitely, it could reveal that her employer isn't paying NI properly or something equally sinister.
 
Thanks for your response. She says her NI contributions and tax seem fine/right. Could SLC loans affect her NI and tax?
 
NI and tax won't be affected since these are calculated on gross pay.

mOdO said:
My gf finished uni 4 years ago and has £10k debt approx. She has been earning over the threshold but SLC have not been in contact or arranged her repayments. Should she get in touch with them to sort it out because interest will be building on it right? Or should she leave it and wait until they get in touch with her?
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She should have told her employers that she owed a student loan when she first started working. I think it was a P46 form?

But yes she will be accruing interest and should let her employers know ASAP, so they can start deducting it through PAYE.
 
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Thanks she will call them on Monday. Probably she filled out the form wrong or didn't fill it out at all, not sure. Why do you think the SLC haven't chased her or figured this out yet it's been 4 years?! I think she was hoping they might have "forgotten" about her or her file mixed up somewhere and they wouldn't ever get in touch with her. Prob best though she contacts them and sorts it
 
I don't think the SLC know until someone tells their employer, who then tell HMRC. Not sure what happens if someone never tells their employers, apart from a large fine and interest demand if caught.
 
Couple of things I experienced with my student loan.

I attended uni twice, so had 2 seperate lots of student loans. One in 97 - 98, and again from '03-'07.

The first set were sold off, which was pants. Meant it wasn't taken off before tax, so I paid tax on my earnings, then paid off the loan after. But it was a relatively small amount.

Second lot were huge. I could borrow somewhere around £4k per year, and as I was repeating 1st and 2nd year, I had to pay fees for these years, so I borrowed maximum amount each time.

When I graduated, I got a pretty low wage, and managed to defer payments a couple years. Then I paid a small amount each month for a couple years. Then I got laid off, so deferred again, but got a job in Holland. I didn't pay anything, and was never chased down. I was there for around 2 years.

Now I work back in the UK, and have started paying it back in earnest. Last I checked it was over £16k. I guess I'll get an update soon with the financial year being over again. But I seem to be paying something between £200 - £300 per month, so I guess it'll go reasonably quickly. Bonus is though, when it is paid, that'll free up a couple hundred quid a month, so might go for a new motor, lol.

With respect to mortgages. It did make a MASSIVE difference to the affordability of my loan. And reduced my borrowing power by well over £100k. Luckily we didn't max out our borrowing when I was working away, as we only just managed to change our mortgage that time, between the reduced borrowing power and the reduced value of the property.
 
Participant said:
As long as you're not paying it off any more, do you need to get a letter confirming it? Also wouldn't the letter come from SLC rather than HMRC, in which case make sure they have your current address details.
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I do because I paid it all off in a lump sum (~£12k) and they couldn't calculate the interest properly so I have probably overpaid. I should at least get a yearly statement. The fact that SLC are completely incompetent is enough to just get it confirmed in writing.
 
1.5% is less than inflation. I have no idea why anyone wants to pay it off early as the debt increases at a rate which means the longer it takes to pay off, the 'less' it costs.
 
sports_brah said:
I've got 21,000£ of student debt.

Wonderful.

Maybe I should simply never return to the UK.... ;)
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Move to Africa and you'll be fine... :p

SLC have deals with all the good countries already so no running off to Oz or Europe*.;)


*Not 100% sure on the latter
 
estebanrey said:
No point paying it off, it's the only debt you can't default on and is cancelled if you move out of the country, retire or simply don't earn enough.

How bad would you feel if you spent lost of time and energy paying it off only to find yourself jobless a month later with no savings because you spent it all on paying off your SL?

I don't even consider it a loan or a debt because it doesn't act like one in any way (see line 1), it's more of a student tax.
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Agreed. Think of it as a capped graduate tax and it makes far more sense.

Thank god the NUS didn't manage to force the government to change to an uncapped graduate tax instead of raising the fees! Idiots.:(
 
I've just let the student loan get repaid with standard PAYE HMRC deductions, and will have paid back my £11K loan by the beginning of next year. My loan deductions have been pretty big this past tax year (~20% of my actual loan), so it will be good to have that money going into my current account instead. :) I'll probably switch to DD payments in a few months so I don't end up overpaying as I've heard that it's hard to claw the money back (although you do get 3% interest on overpayments from SLC).
 
3 more payments to go for me :) I swapped to pay by direct debit, which meant I got to miss two months of payments while they sorted it out and then my payments were spread over 5 months to finish off the last bit. I started off with 16K in loans so it be good to see it paid off.
 
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