Uni + Loan

Wayward23

Hey all :]

I’ve currently got a loan with my bank, HSBC. It’s an unsecured personal loan and I’m paying back £230 a month or so. I’ve had it for about six months, never missed a payment, etc. With interest, I currently owe about £10,000. I originally got it out after getting into some huge problems with deposits at a couple of rented properties, long story and not very relevant, I think?

I left my job for personal reasons 8 weeks ago. Basically, I lose my (rented) apartment, job, girlfriend and most of my possessions in the space of a week. I got over all that though, and I’m currently living with my mum, which isn’t desirable, but it is at least cheap.

I spent six weeks without a job before I was able to find a reasonably waged, local and decent job. Having to live In the middle of nowhere means I’m spending quite a bit of my wages on transport, and although my mum is lovely she believes quite firmly and quite rightly in me paying me way, so I also pay the electric bill, food, some of the council tax and gas, etc.

Basically, if I work all month, I grab about £180 a week and between mum and transport, I’m left with about £90. This means if nothing comes up, with the loan, I’m saving about £130 a month. Unfortunately, I had to pay the loan and live and move and mess around for the last six weeks of not being employed, so I’m only really paying off my overdraft. To make things even happier, I went over it by a little last month and the bank through another £100 in there. Thanks, HSBC.

Still, I work hard and take what I can and I don’t spend much. I can get out of all that ‘immediate’ debt within three months, and although it gets me down and stresses me out quite often, considering the problems I’ve read that other people have had, I’m going to sound a bit selfish now.

I’m 23, and I’ve lost everything that I’ve built up in the last six years, and I really want to now make a fresh start. A big part of me doing that is going to university. This is something that isn’t really debatable, if I can go I will. I know the sensible advice of course is to not going until the four years on my loan are finished, but I want to go before I’m older and before I’ve built up new ties in the area. For me, now is the perfect time to go, and I’ve already had unconditional offers from some very good universities.

Excellent, and living with my mum who earns very little and my own salary not counting towards getting a student loan, I believe I’ll be illegible for a large sum, if not the maximum for student loans, as well as a grant from the government. These combined, hopefully, will mean that my accommodation/tuition fees shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I can live cheaply, and had the loan not been an issue, I’d have no problem with a nice part time job for a bit of money for food and drink.

Problem is, adding £230 on top of that is going to get me in real trouble. There’s no way I’d be able to afford that. Is there anything at all I could do that would make this a possibility for me? I feel terrible suggesting bankruptcy or defaulting, but at the same time, uni is something I really , /really/ want to do now, and although I’m not naive enough to believe degree = money, I believe my area of study and my work ethic should pretty much secure my future, or at the very least, give me some sort of better chance at life than living at my mums working for £7/hour in an office for the next 4 years while paying off this debt.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

poppyg_2

Hi, ok, when you go to uni is there any chance you can get some sort of part time job to help pay some off the debt each month? If so, I am guessing your best bet would maybe to write to your creditors to explain change in circumstances and ask if you could make reduced payments to your loan

By the time you go to Uni will you have paid off your O/D? It would really help if you could post up a full statement of affairs listing your incomings and outgoings

Have you looked into the Uni grants to see what sort of financial support might be available for you?

Wayward23

Hi poppy, thanks for replying so quickly.

poppyg wrote: »

Hi, ok, when you go to uni is there any chance you can get some sort of part time job to help pay some off the debt each month? If so, I am guessing your best bet would maybe to write to your creditors to explain change in circumstances and ask if you could make reduced payments to your loan

Assuming I get the amount of money I am hoping to get from the student loan company and the government grant, and assuming how long it takes to find work, where I find work, the pay and hours I do, yes. There is no way I'll be going to uni and not working, but everything about how my finances will work is really up in the air.

poppyg wrote: »

By the time you go to Uni will you have paid off your O/D? It would really help if you could post up a full statement of affairs listing your incomings and outgoings

As I said, I should hopefully be out of that debt within three months (uni is in four). This gives me a generous amount of time so barrring disaster, I'll have no debt but the loan. The problem is that the £230 that is mangeable on a full time job is simply not working to work at uni, even if I have no other outgoings and the student loan covers everything. I can give you a very detailed list of my current finance, but I'm not sure it would help? It's all going to change in September, which is where the problem lies.

poppyg wrote: »

Have you looked into the Uni grants to see what sort of financial support might be available for you?

They may well give me a £500 hardship bursary/grant, but its a one off payment so while it's certainly worth looking into, it'll only cover the loan for two months, so it's not a long term solution, unfortauntely.

poppyg_2

I think it may well be worth writing to your creditor to ask them to accept reduced payments or maybe even a token payment until you're in a better position to pay them (there's a template letter knocking about somewhere). Does anyone else have any advice if they've been in a similar situation?

It does sound like Uni would be a good idea for you given the circumstances you're in at the moment. Alternatively, is there a chance do you think of finding a job that might support you to do a Uni course part time or do you want the whole 'Uni experience'?

Wayward23

poppyg wrote: »

It does sound like Uni would be a good idea for you given the circumstances you're in at the moment. Alternatively, is there a chance do you think of finding a job that might support you to do a Uni course part time or do you want the whole 'Uni experience'?

The course im doing /might/ be possible part time but there's a lot of work experience involved. I've been accepted to one of the best universities in the country to do Journalism and considering how much of a hands on course it is and that I've already lined up placements in the BBC, I think it's something that I really wanted to experience in it's entirety as opposed to doing it in half measures, if at all possible.

But yes, I'd like to know if anyone has an experiences of what HSBC might say, and where this template is hanging about?

Ames

I wouldn't recommend part time, I'm planning it because my health wont let me do full time. The maximum fee support you can get for half the hours is about £800, and there's no limit to what fees they can charge - half of the full time is £1700, so even though I'm on income support I expect I'll have to find about a grand myself, so financially full time is better. You also get full loan instead of £250.

Wayward23

Ames wrote: »

I wouldn't recommend part time, I'm planning it because my health wont let me do full time. The maximum fee support you can get for half the hours is about £800, and there's no limit to what fees they can charge - half of the full time is £1700, so even though I'm on income support I expect I'll have to find about a grand myself, so financially full time is better. You also get full loan instead of £250.

Wow, sorry to hear that. It looks like full time wouild be the only option for me then, I'd be looking at a £4,000 maintenance loan plus a £2,000 grant in the first year, so even if I stayed at work 16 hours a week i'd only just be catching up to that, plus it would take six years to finish the course