Student loans negative interest, pay cuts, pensions & savings gains!

itsnever2lateisit?

Well al the pundits forecasting deflation were wrong, guess they didn't factor in the effect of sterlings slide.

For those of us complaining that we only see inflation, that is probably because RPI compares a range of products to the same range last year. You and I only have so much disposable income, if the essentials (Food/Fuel etc) go up, then there is less to spend on the items that have gone down in price (LCD TV's and the like) so our personal inflation is skewed by the fact we have changed our 'basket'

ad44downey

Nobody believes these nonsense inflation figures anymore. They make it up as they go along, it's way higher than any of the ones they publish. That's why they have at least 2 inflation figures to try to fool people

drc

There's an explanatoin of the difference between the RPI and the CPI in this article;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164309/Millions-face-worst-worlds-cost-living-rises-rate-fixing-pay-pensions-falls-zero.html

DaveyDave_3

The only reason RPI is falling is because of lower mortgage costs which has been brought about inappropriately by the BoE (abandoning CPI control with interest rates as their remit states). The vast majority of normal comsumables are going up in price and will continue to do so while the effects of weak sterling take hold. This state of affairs has the potential to get into a 'hyper-inflation' situation later as all of this new money that the BoE has printed gets into circulation. Sounds nasty. Perhaps the BoE will then be forced to raise interest rates to a sensible level to attract money into the UK.

dealsearcher

I think there's too much flatulation in this government.

lana22

neas wrote: »

Only good news is either this month or next month next years student loan interest rates are set... so we wont be paying any interest on the 10k+ student loans we all got ;P

Mine's double that

And I have to start repaying it from next month, but what I will be repaying won't even cover the interest, so it will keep growing and growing.

poppy10_2

lana22 wrote: »

what I will be repaying won't even cover the interest, so it will keep growing and growing.

You can overpay it if you want.

lana22

poppy10 wrote: »

You can overpay it if you want.

I know I can overpay if I want to, but I'd rather overpay my mortgage.
It's just my loan is a hell of a lot bigger than most people's because of the length of my course. It's a shame we have to get ourselves in to so much debt in order to follow our career path. I have less than most junior doctors, because I somehow managed a part time job (apart from my final year when it was simply impossible for me), but it was very, very hard, and I don't blame people who can't hold down a job.

MM46

StevieJ wrote: »

RPI is not a good measure for uplifting pensions as most pensioners do not have a mortgage :cool:

Absolutely right. And any savings we accumulated during our working lives are now getting low interest, so our income has decreased while our necessary expenditure continues to rise, leaving nothing left for a few luxuries like holidays

wild666

I have just done the inflation calculator and over the last 12 months my personal inflation has been as low as 2.6% but as high as 6.2% for Feb it is at 3.1% yet the national is 0%
The items used to calculate the price indexes have items that people buy perhaps once every 7 to 10 years, the phone I have does everything I want, food and petrol are my main expenses as I spend more on them than all my other bills put together each month.
To me it seems they alter the basket to include items that are dropping in price and remove those that are increasing in price therefore manipulating the inflation rate. All seldom bought items like washing machines, TVs, fridges, games consoles and the like should not be included as they are bought by most people only when the old one is beyond economic repair and that could be as long as once every 10 years.