financial advice required

janinafrancis

:eek: wondering if anyone may be able to help me or give me some guidance. I am starting my first year studying at university. I am a mature student aged 25. my parents are overseas in the forces and have been living here independently since the age of 17. my parents were unable to support me which has lead me to get myself into debt. it stared with overdrafts which landeded me with a 15.000 pounds personal loan and 3 maxed out credit cards totalling 4000 pounds. I am currently working full time but will be cutting my hours considerably. I have applied for a student bank account allowing me to use the interest free overdraft facility to pay off part of my credit card debt. I was hoping to use any money i may recieve from the maintance grant to cover some of the costs. should i also apply for a student loan to pay off my personal loan in stages.i am worried about the repayments i will have to continue to make throughout my time studying.
would i be eligable for the access to learning grant? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.

FreheitOverture

Ouch, I really feel for you. Your university should have bursaries which they give out to students in need so I suggest you ask them for help.

silvercar

Apply for the student loan for maintenance and for tuition fees. The interest rate is lower than you could get anywhere else, apart from the interest free overdraft from the banks. You also don't have to start paying it back until you earn over £15,000.

Ytaya

Definitely apply for the student loan. It's very cheap borrowing, it's set at inflation rates.

Try applying for the Access to Learning grant, it can't hurt! The worst they can do is say no, and you're no worse off, right?

Also, you're not supposed to have more than one student bank account with 0% overdraft, but many people do. Be aware that technically, if the bank finds out they can ask you to repay it instantly, but this almost never happens. So maybe try for another overdraft somewhere else too?

I got through uni, without parental financial support, making repayments on £12k of debt. You can do it! It's hard, but it's possible!

Pandora_2

janinafrancis wrote: »

:eek: wondering if anyone may be able to help me or give me some guidance. I am starting my first year studying at university. I am a mature student aged 25. my parents are overseas in the forces and have been living here independently since the age of 17. my parents were unable to support me which has lead me to get myself into debt. it stared with overdrafts which landeded me with a 15.000 pounds personal loan and 3 maxed out credit cards totalling 4000 pounds. I am currently working full time but will be cutting my hours considerably. I have applied for a student bank account allowing me to use the interest free overdraft facility to pay off part of my credit card debt. I was hoping to use any money i may recieve from the maintance grant to cover some of the costs. should i also apply for a student loan to pay off my personal loan in stages.i am worried about the repayments i will have to continue to make throughout my time studying.
would i be eligable for the access to learning grant? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.

That's almost the exact same situation as me when I started uni last year!! How weird!! Definately apply for all the student finance you can get, loan and grant of course, and any bursary from the uni. You probably will be eligable for the ALF but it's done on an individual basis so can't say for sure. You have to do an income and expenditure form and give proof of your outgoings, you also have to have used up your loan, grant and overdraft before they will give you any money, as if you have money available then you don't 'need' the ALF :rolleyes:

I went to the CAB and got them to negotiate with my creditors to freeze the interest and any charges and have managed to get them to agree to a reduced payment plan until I have finished uni, and then I just pay a bit extra every now and then if I have any extra money. Might be worth going for a chat with the CAB to see if they can do something for you as well. Obviously it means those debts are hanging around for longer, but it also means you won't be crippled by the repayments.

Good luck though, and if I can help at all I will

DrFluffy

You can only apply for ALF once you've applied for a maintainance loan.

As soon as you do that, you should be very eligable to apply and have two factors that would place you high up on the pecking list: mature and bank loans...

janinafrancis

Thank you everyone for your advice.

Pink_Eyes

Apply for all student finance you're entitled to. Also, with the ALF, even if you don't apply for the student finance, they count it anyway.

windra

Because you are self supportive and over 25 you will be entitles to the full amount of grant as your income withh be £0 unless you get job. That means you could get upto £2500 grant on top of your loan.

Univercities also give bursaries for many reasons but dont tell you about them, my uni gives £1000 to every student with low income, plus £1000 for the first in the fammily to do a degree if you live local.