student loan repayment help please

morg_monster

Contrary to some people's replies - I wouldn't worry about it too much. I know people who have waited over a year to start paying back their loan. I personally waited about 7 months after starting my job (paying over 15k). It is actually HMRC who control taking the money from your pay, nothing to do with SLC, and then at the end of the year they turn all the student loan payments over to SLC who back-calculate interest and how much you still owe. I would first talk to your payroll department to ask if there is anything they can do about it, someone may just not have joined the dots properly when you started. I'm unclear about actually the process involved but I would start with your company first, I believe HMRC should check your name/NI number against a big old list from SLC and ascertain that you should be paying back, and this process can take a while. Move on to SLC next but I don't find them very helpful when I've called them, but they should be able to tell you at least "Don't worry about it for now".

They won't backdate the payments, I'm sure.

Finally i would calculate how much you should be paying each month and save that in a savings account, so that you are getting used to having it taken from your pay every month, and also so that you are offsetting some of the interest you are paying.

(To calculate how much you should be paying per month, subtract £15,000 from your pay, multiply by 0.09 and divide by 12, so if you earn £24000,
24000-15000=9000
9000*0.09=810
810/12=£67.50 per month)

morg_monster

Just found this on the student loans website (this page http://www.direct.gov.uk/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/RepayingStudentLoansPost1998/RepayingStudentLoansPost1998Articles/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=10034866&chk=4cw/s5 )

"Your student loan repayments will normally start on 6 April after you graduate, or stop attending your course....
If the April following your last date of attendance has already passed, your repayments will commence as soon as can be arranged, and you will only make repayments from this point. "

Another page on this site you might find useful (also explains why SLC seem so clueless - apart from the so called "information transfer windows" they really don't have any idea what is going on with your loan!!)
http://www.direct.gov.uk/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/RepayingStudentLoansPost1998/RepayingStudentLoansPost1998Articles/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=10034870&chk=6Mby89