Student Loans will start repayments whilst still a Student: University forced end date change

[Deleted User]

Hi there,

So here's all the information. If you get to the end, and have any advice to offer, then thank you. Also, if you want to say something sassy and judgemental, I get it, I've not made amazing choices. But please be as gentle as you can muster, I'm human, I'm learning. My instinct about everything below is to just make the payments when they kick in without taking a payment holiday, and once my course is over, get the best job I can and pivot off of the higher income to try and get a consolidating loan with a better interest rate. So I'm here to check whether that's the right instinct...

STUDENT INFORMATION

• I'm a student studying for a Masters. I have a Career Development Loan and a further loan from Future Finance.
  
• I have been studying the Masters since the end of 2018. During the lead up to my final assessments in 2019, I became unwell and had to defer. The soonest the University could let me sit these assessments was the same time the following academic year i.e. 2020; so I had to wait a whole year to complete a one year Masters in the space of two calendar years.
•  Here's the fun twist: in the lead up to my 2020 assessments the world became unwell and had to defer. AKA the Pandemic kicked off. My University decided that some students were not in a position to be assessed in the online manner that would enable them to complete their studies and move on.
• So here I am, groundhog year, set up to do assessments across this, 2020-2021, academic year.

LOAN DETAILS

The first time around, when I personally needed to defer, The Career Development Loan provider was good enough to arrange for a delay in interest accumilating or payments being made until the following (2019-2020) academic year was over. You get a window of three months after course completion and then you start payments. My thoughts were to do the MSE advise and get a loan with a better interest rate at that point.

During the second academic year I decided to get the Future Finance Loan; I thought I could essentially do the same thing as the CDL: consolidate these two loans with higher interest rates, into a big loan with a smaller interest rate later before the bigger payments kicked in. The Future Finance loan would ask for payments 6 months after the course end date point. (They get £5/month the whole time until then, when the payments become closer to £300.)

PANDEMIC CONSEQUENCES

I've contacted both providers to say, 'there's another delay, but this time a pandemic, so I'll still be a student when you want payments back.' Co-op, the CDL provider, said that they can only give a maximum of 15 months' delay in getting payments across all my extra study time. So I'll be asked for payments from May 2020. My course ends in October 2020. Future Finance will be asking for payments from February 2020. They can't offer any delays the way Co-op do. Both providers have indicated that if, at the time of repayment commencement, I anticipate problems then I should contact them to make arrangements. This is no doubt a payment holiday scenario.

BEFORE YOU ASK/FYI

- Yes, I know the Future Finance loan was a silly choice and there were better ways. I'm human, I'm learning.

- Yes, I know there's no guarantee that you'll be accepted for a loan with a better rate after finishing the course and that choice was a risk. I'm human, I'm learning.

- I am earning an income around the time needed to keep my head in the 'studying' game, enough to pay my way until the course finally ends. And this could cover payments until I'm finished and get a better paying job to trigger potential loan change ups to better rates. But it's gunna be tight.

- The interest rates are 9.9% CDL (for £10k), and 15% FF (for £12k that has now risen to £14.5k from interest, initial fees etc). Crappy rates, the latter being obviously worse as, if I repay the loan across 11 months (as an example window of February until December), I'll have paid around £3k, but the loan itself will only be £1k down because of accumulating interest. I'd always thought I'd be in a grad job and paying the same monthly amounts with a way better rate by that point. But I can't get that job, to get that loan, to pay at that rate, until I graduate.

MY BIG QUESTIONS THEN (And thank you for having read everything and being interested in advising me):

Should I just make payments without trying to change anything, or should I take a payment holiday as much as I can in order take the pressure off of finding the extra money even though it seems this will stay on my credit report for 3 years as I understand it? (The interest rate is such, particularly on the FF loan, that the extra interest from a holiday won't be much of a scary concept on top of the way their interest will chase my payments anyway.)

Or should I be doing something else that I'm too uninformed to realise is an option?

[Deleted User]

PANDEMIC CONSEQUENCES

I've contacted both providers to say, 'there's another delay, but this time a pandemic, so I'll still be a student when you want payments back.' Co-op, the CDL provider, said that they can only give a maximum of 15 months' delay in getting payments across all my extra study time. So I'll be asked for payments from May 2020. My course ends in October 2020. Future Finance will be asking for payments from February 2020. They can't offer any delays the way Co-op do. Both providers have indicated that if, at the time of repayment commencement, I anticipate problems then I should contact them to make arrangements. This is no doubt a payment holiday scenario.

Just a correction to all the 'Pandemic Consequences' dates here: it's all 2021, not 2020.

[Deleted User]

If you could just bullet point the main issues, that will make it much easier for you to get responses.

[Deleted User]

Update to my post for anyone that reads it because they are in the same/similar position:

As no one had a reply I figured it out a bit more for myself. The points and the best conclusions are as follows...

Moral of the tale:

1. Forums like short posts first or they won't respond. Even if you know full well the responses will be full of questions that you had anticipated and answered in a longer post to begin with. They like to feel that they are going through those thought processes at their own pace, not your longer initial post!

2. Don't get out a loan if you can get a SFE extenuating circumstances repeat loan. Always worth an ask to them first. And if in doubt, at least get a part time job to pile things up a bit, even if you don't need it for any other reason than that there's a tiny weeny chance there'll be a pandemic next year, a University will delay your graduation and you'll need that piled up shrapnel to pay off loan repayments that you otherwise can ill afford as a continuing student!

3. DON'T EVER TAKE A PAYMENT HOLIDAY. Unless the literal only other option you face is defaulting. Then do so if you must.

4. Don't assume you'll get a big loan to pay off other loans when you graduate. I know MSE has suggested this for Career Development Loans, and they do have a generous course end date change policy. But I've read on other forum posts that sometimes you don't get offered a better deal than the original CDL. So be prepared for both outcomes, that you'll be offered and not offered a loan when in employment.

5. Magically anticipate a Pandemic that student loans companies won't care about when asking for higher repayments figures whilst you're still a student. When it comes down to it, they are a loan company like any other, don't care about personal circumstances out of your control, and will only offer generic assistance that will sit on your credit report for years.  

monetxchange

There's a lot of information here and I'm still not sure I follow. Three quarters of your post is defensive "I know I've made bad choices, don't hold it against me". This isn't Mumsnet - people will want to offer help if they can, not just remonstrate with you. So what are the main bullets you want answering?