career development loans

Britt

Seems to me that as this is a Government project, you should contact your local MP and make a complaint about the service to him. He in turn should contact the Minister responsible.

My son was offered a place in a College for the blind some years ago but was informed there were no funds available, (at the start of the fiscal year!) so I contacted our MP who happens to be very good. Funds suddenly became available and Mike went off to College. Britt

superscaper

I can only speak of my experience of a few years ago, I got mine out to pay for a masters in 2001 (last year I finished my repayments yay) and it was through Royal Bank of Scotland (I thought it'd be easier because my student account was already with them. I wanted to borrow £6000 (on the low side to cover everything but I don't like borrowing) and on the phone the person was useless. Why work for a bank if you can't even work out the interest!

I calculated the pay back to be just over 200 per month making it something like 7300 in total. The woman on the phone told me the total would be ELEVEN thousand and something!!!!! It took some convincing she'd got her basic maths wrong. Then it took ages to get through. Then near the end of my masters I was given the option of "upgrading" to a PhD (with funding for 2 years). Of course I said yes and I went to bank to discuss finances (keeping overdraft in place until funding came through etc) and discuss CDL. Local branch couldn't do anything about it as CDLs are done at the bank headquarters by specialist department.

So I phoned to see if I could defer payments, not for the entire time just maybe a year or six months seeing as I technically hadn't finished my course (upgrading to phd means continuing project and not getting masters) and I wouldn't get a job for quite a while. They said absolutely not and they were quite rude practically accusing me of being deceptive "shifting the goalposts" was the term they used and they would never have given me the loan in the first place if they knew I was doing a PhD.

I didn't even know I was doing a PhD until I started it. What was I going to say "pay me to do a PhD? no thanks my CDL bank wouldn't like it". I'm glad I've got the repayments out of the way (although I was certainly not well off while at uni, repayments greater than my rent) but they were so inflexible and incompetant when I went through the process in complete contrast to my local branch of RBS who were great. I don't know how much the process has changed since then though.

dudleyboy

ringo_24601 wrote:

I remember looking at career developement loans... don't they have stupidly high (12%) interest rates after your year of non-payments occurs?

Yes, unless you know what you are doing...

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1045441846,81288,#save

Britt wrote:

My son was offered a place in a College for the blind some years ago but was informed there were no funds available, (at the start of the fiscal year!) so I contacted our MP who happens to be very good. Funds suddenly became available and Mike went off to College

Funny that, huh?! Good for you! That's certainly an idea...!

superscaper wrote:

I don't know how much the process has changed since then though.

What a nightmare! I hope it has (although I some how doubt it).

Thanks all for the replies. It's helped relieve my frustration at least. I'm still looking forward to that "courtesy call", although i'm still not sure i'll be all that courteous...

rakesh_2

Hey ppl

I work for the CDL - Just to let u know that the CDL shud b viewed as a last resort in funding for educational courses. Other sources of funding can include the following

EGAS - Educational Grants Advisory Service http://www.egas-online.org/fwa/index.html

funderfinder http://www.funderfinder.org.uk/

http://www.support4learning.org.uk/money/index.cfm

hope the above links help u guys

lwt2006

Hi guys.

Please will all you experts out there see if you can advise whether we should pay off my husband's Career Development Loan or not?

Amount borrowed - £2170
Cost of credit - £453.68

Total Loan - £2623.68

Interest rate 12.9% (APR 5.7%)

To be paid over 36 months - have made 13 payments so far.

Phoned for settlement figure today which is £1483.13

The way we would pay is to put this balance onto a 0% credit card.

We do the credit card tart thing moving balances when promo period is up, but occasionally, we haven't been quick enough and ended up paying standard variable rates for a few months.

Is it worth it? I would appreciate comments, thank you.

olly300

I would just over pay the loan for these reasons:

1. The APR on the career development loan is much lower than a standard credit card APR. (Credit card APRs are about 15%)

2. CC companies according to all the finiancial press are clamping down on rate tarts because they are losing money over fees.

3. The most important reason you state that you are not moving quickly enough which means you probably end up paying the same or more interest trying to rate tart for more hassle.

lwt2006

Thank you for replying. I admit we have been slow in the past, but you would not believe how determined I am to sort out our outgoings. It is a new leaf for us and I am TAKING CONTROL!!

I take on board your comments, 1 & 2, but if we can get 0% (and we just have been accepted for one courtesy of Martin's Best Buy BT card), then surely it is better?

I do, however, realise comment 3 is the make or break point - we will not be victims of that again, I can assure you.

What do you think?

MABLE

................................................

Bokken_2

Yes it will be better to have the outstanding balance on a 0% credit card,but,
you must have a very tight control on your payment dates and 0% expiry dates.If you think you can do this then give it a go.
Read up on Martin's credit card articles and make sure you understand what you read and more importantly how it is going to apply to your accounts/credit cards and you should be okay.
Allow plenty of time for payments to arrive and set up direct debits so that it is automated that way you should avoid any late charges .
good luck.

lwt2006

Thank you for the replies.

I am doing what we can to reduce outgoings, done phone, broadband, energy and car insurance so far.

Can some one please explain how Quidco works? I've read posts mentioning it. Something to do with cashback?