Student loan repayments

BigBouncyBall

Ouch.

Anyone else tempted to disappear to the jungles of Africa for 5 years to escape it all

Taiko

Shame it doesn't work that way.

Oldernotwiser

You have fallen for an urban myth if you think that living abroad for 5 years cancels student loan repayments.

(If your loan payments make you go ouch, you must be on an enormously high income!)

BigBouncyBall

living in the jungle for 10 years then?

ThinkingOfLinking

More like 25 years; they cancel your debt 25 years after you become eligible to repay it.

Poolie

The 25 year cancellation rule only applies to the new loans from 2006 onwards. Borrowers between 1998 and 2006 would need to wait till they were 60.

whitfreak

Oh and living abroad has different repayment threasholds to account for the difference in the cost of living. So most Jungle counties its about £3k a year rather than £15k. Sweden is like £18k though...

Of course enforcing repayment from people abroad is legally hard depending on where you go. But that doesnt mean they can't slap you with a large fine should they a) find out and b) you return to the UK.

And I know it was a joke, but it does iritate me the number of students who seem to get shocked at how much the repayments are, and how long it takes to repay them. If you're clever enough to go to uni you're clever enough to know what 9% over £15k is and then to compare that to how much you expect to borrow.

A student earning £25k out of uni with £14k in loans will take around 12 years to repay it presuming their earnings track inflation and inflation is around 1.5%. (These seem like reasonable expected averages). Although I suppose if the government put that in the information packs they wouldn't get 50% of school leavers going to uni....