Refund of voluntary student loan repayments?

Inexpensive_lady

Does anyone know whether or not it is possible to get a refund of my additional voluntary payments to the SLC?

I've been making additional payments of £100 a month by BACS since about Dec 2007, but I'm now getting worried about my job security and was wondering whether or not I can get some of the cash back to build up my reserves a bit more?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

(PS I did try the SLC repayment website but it is down right now....)

Inexpensive_lady

Sorry, cancel my last, just found this on direct.gov:

"The Student Loans Company does not refund any voluntary payments that you have made unless you have finished repaying the loan and these are in fact 'overpayments'"

Oldernotwiser

I'm sorry you haven't been able to do what you've wanted to do, but your post really emphasises the fact that making additional voluntary payments on Student Loans is not a good thing. If you'd put this money in some kind of savings account you'd now have it available to you.

(Please don't think I'm having a go at you. We get a lot of people asking about doing this and your post was too good an example of the pitfalls to miss.)

Inexpensive_lady

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I'm sorry you haven't been able to do what you've wanted to do, but your post really emphasises the fact that making additional voluntary payments on Student Loans is not a good thing. If you'd put this money in some kind of savings account you'd now have it available to you.

(Please don't think I'm having a go at you. We get a lot of people asking about doing this and your post was too good an example of the pitfalls to miss.)

I understand that you are trying to help and no personal offence has been taken, but I disagree that making additional voluntary payments is ALWAYS a bad idea (or rather, not a good thing). I did save and managed to build up (fairly good) reserves before my conscious decision to start making additional voluntary payments - and my reasons were not purely financial.

Even if I had been able to reclaim my additional voluntary payments I am not certain that I would have. I was simply trying to arm myself with all the facts before making my decision and avoiding the pitfall of simply following blindly what other people tell me to do.

Oldernotwiser

Inexpensive_lady wrote: »

I understand that you are trying to help and no personal offence has been taken, but I disagree that making additional voluntary payments is ALWAYS a bad idea (or rather, not a good thing). I did save and managed to build up (fairly good) reserves before my conscious decision to start making additional voluntary payments - and my reasons were not purely financial.

Even if I had been able to reclaim my additional voluntary payments I am not certain that I would have. I was simply trying to arm myself with all the facts before making my decision and avoiding the pitfall of simply following blindly what other people tell me to do.

I'm happy that you didn't take my post personally as it wasn't intended that way.

Making voluntary repayments isn't always a bad thing but you do lose all flexibility by doing this. This is something everybody should take into account before making this decision.

I'm glad that it wasn't important to you to be able to reclaim these payments.