Help With Student Loans - HERE!

SamMoffatt28

Hi, I wonder if you could advise me please?

I am almost 30, married with 4 children. Starting a social work degree in september. Hubby earns approx £20000 p/a. I get child tax credit and child benefit for the children (do I have to declare these as earnings?). I know I am entitled to a GSCC bursary & tuition fees paid also by them. I was wondering if I am supposed to apply for income assessed or non income assessed student finance? Obviously I wont be applying for a tuition fees loan.
Also, if I get the GSCC bursary will I still be entitled to claim other bursaries such as maintenance grant + scholarship bursary offered by my uni or do I have to choose which one I want?

Sorry if this seems complicated I don't seem to be getting the answers from my LEA!

Thanks in advance, Sam x

slcworker

Im not familiar with your specific bursary, but if it is an NHS supported course then it should be okay. ur maintenance grant and scholarship bursary should not effect each other.
I'm afraid your questions are very specific to the assessments made by the LEA, so my advice would be only general. but i would advise income assessed. And just try the application. They can only say no....but then again. Ask to speak to the head of ur Lea, that normally gets thru to them

rlm_3

Kittenkirst wrote:

Hi,
Im graduating this year (hopefully if they sort out the strike action) and wondered how much the interest on the loan actually is and whether if I am earning only minimum wage after graduation whether it is financially worth saving the money and paying off my loan asap after graduation (want to get a mortgage with my partner in a couple of years)
Thanks

Hi Kittenkirst,

Not sure this answers your question but my BF and I went to see a mortgage advisor last year. She said that mortgages these days are based on 'affordability', that is, what other things do you have to pay for each month? I have a SL but I'm not yet making repayments as I'm still a (postgraduate) student. Apparently if even if you have a SL it isn't neccessarily taken into account when applying for a mortgage, that is, the SL debt doesn't count if you don't have to make payments on it yet (i.e., if you're still a student or if you're not earning enough to make SL contributions).

HTH

kar

Hi SLC,

I don't know if you'll know this or not but do you know anything about the PGCE 'grant?' payments.

I was told by my careers service that the government pays you about 150 pw (£6000 a year I think i forget the exact amounts) when you are on the PGCE course (term time only) but haven't heard anything about this now i've been acepted. Is this correct and if so how to i apply (if i need to)?

I know that the govn pays 1200 towards fees for PGCe and rest is means tested (whereas last year they paid the whole lot for you)!!! But was wondering about this money as it will affect whether or not i apply for the student loan.

thanks

kar

slcworker

Hey i tend to try not to know anything about the PGCE grant, cause its so complex sometimes. But their helpline number is 08456000991. Sorry and Good Luck. x

mattsaze

Hi SLC

My friend has saved for years to start uni.

I suggested to her that instead of using her own money to pay fees etc, she take a loan (both tuition and maintenance) from SLC and put her savings into a high interest (5%) ISA or similar.

Question is - Do you know if her savings will accrue more interest than a Student Loan and thus be able to pay back the loan with her savings at the end of her course and cream off the extra earned interest for herself?

If so then this would be a good thread to start for others.

Thanks for speaking from the lions den! Matt.

kar

Yes savings at 5% would earn more interest that debt at inflation level

wirm

slcworker wrote:

Hey i tend to try not to know anything about the PGCE grant, cause its so complex sometimes. But their helpline number is 08456000991. Sorry and Good Luck. x

Here's the Geographical number if you don't want to phone the 0845 one: 0141 2433310

Taken from https://www.saynoto0870.com

Chalky87

I thought it would be better to post this here, rather than start a new topic...can anyone tell me when I should renew my student loan application, I will be entering my second year of Uni in September, but I'm not sure how to go about applying again for a student loan...any advice?

Odyssy

HI there SLCworker, hope you can shed some light on this. My daughter had one of the 'old' style student loans around the mid to late nineties and then one of the newer type for the later part of her degree course. As far as I can remember, the transition beween the 2 kinds and the difference between the repayment terms and salary thresholds were quite complex. I don't remember the exact dates and never knew the amounts.
She's moved addresses several times and never earned more than about £13,000, she's never made any repayments, and she's deferred the loan a few times as required.
The problem seems to be that when she last moved she sent the deferral forms with her change of address.

There then seems to have been several exchanges along the lines of 'You've not sent us your deferral forms'.
'Yes I have, they were with my letter to you informing you of my new address, to which you have just sent me a letter telling me that you you haven't received them.'

There then seemed to be a silence, until we (as one of her contact addresses) started getting phone calls from a company called The Logic Group, asking about my daughters whereabouts, could I confirm that her phone number ends in XXX and her address is at number XX (both were correct) and when questioned why they were calling, said it was about collecting the arrears of her student loan repayments.

I told them to write to her. They said get her to call us (on an 0870 number). They have since called her other contact (an 85 year old relative) three times, tried here again (my wife sent them away with a flea in their ear) and on each occasion been told to write to her.

I found the company details on the web :- http://www.logicgroupplc.com/Services_Home.html

They have now (after several weeks) written to her about this and mentioned getting local collectors to call.

From an entirely different source, I have been told that the SLC is 'quite good at losing deferral forms'. As my daughter has been unemployed for several months and is struggling to survive, she is now getting worried and increasingly angry.

Sorry for the long post, but could someone confirm (or otherwise) if the SLC is selling its debts for collection? And what we should do about it.

Thanks.