Student loan repayment

Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2006
Posts
12,456
Location
Sufferlandria
As others have said, plan 1 is not worth paying off earlier than you have to, current interest rate is 1.25%. I.e. its inflating itself away.

That depends. If you're not getting 1.25% on savings/investments then your money is inflating itself away faster than your loan is so you'd be better off paying it.
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Nov 2003
Posts
11,600
Location
Manchester, UK
This thread prompted me to look at my own student loan debt etc. I'm on plan 1, I think the loan interest rate is 1.5%. I did check to see if mine was the loan type that's wiped after x number of years and it isn't :( its wiped when I hit 65!! I can't really afford to put more towards it so it looks like 10 more years for me until mines paid off.
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2007
Posts
5,581
Location
London
If pre-2012 loans, then its simple, dont pay anything extra regardless.

If post 2012, then if you earn around 50k or so+, and have cash to spare, its worth doing the calculations and then making extra payments.

The caveat to this is, once you decide to pay it off, you need to do it aggressively and not stop, otherwise all additional repayments become entirely wasted money providing no benefit at all.
 
Associate
Joined
15 Nov 2007
Posts
2,303
Location
Sheffield, UK
As others have said you need to contact SLC and get them to tell your employer to stop the PAYE payments. This can be quick or long depending on your employer. Once you're on DD then you can do the one off payment and there will be no overpayments. I recently did this as they contacted me to say i was in my final year of payments and it took around 3 months to clear through and switch over. Should be done with SLC after 2 more months :D
 
Associate
Joined
11 Aug 2011
Posts
682
I graduated in 2020 and owe a despicable >£60k.

The loan rate of 12% is scandalous. As others have said, I'll evaluate overpaying when I hit a salary of £50k+, but should the high rates of inflation continue for any number of years then it'll likely just more sense to wait for it to be written off.
 
Caporegime
Joined
29 Jan 2008
Posts
58,912
Heard all sorts of horror stories where loans company wait til the next tax year which would defeat the point.

That certainly could happen in the past, it was some odd system where they looked at tax records or something (?).

I guess the assumption is or was that it would only cause slight overpayments and then they'd just refund it but it caught out quite a few people in the city especially if they had generous bonuses.
 
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