To wonder why anyone rushes to pay off their student finance?

So in your case it makes sense to prioritise other debts, as you are doing. As you can see from the replies though, for others it absolutely makes sense to prioritise a high interest student loan.

Does that answer your question as to why people do it?

I was one of the first years to have loans and graduated with about £15k of debt.

I loathe debt and didn't have or want a house or car or baby in my 20s. I had plenty of money to save so I paid the student loan off. I don't think I'd be comfortable with a huge debt hanging over me and psychologically it was the best thing to do.

I later had savings and could have paid off my low interest mortgage but decided to do the "right" thing by investing it at higher interest instead. Of course the shares tanked and I lost thousands. Really regretted it. I always pay off the debt first now.

I overpaid mine for the simple reason that making payments from overseas every month was a real ball ache, and I wanted the headspace.

They were expressing their point of view. It really is not that difficult to understand everyone has a different approach to debt and how to tackle it and I would assume someone who is well educated to be aware and not feel the need to start a whole post implying how others in their social circle don’t manage their money correctly because they chose to do it differently when you don’t know their entire financial background - that to me is snide.

Some of your posts are misinformed too - for example the one about having no impact on your mortgage which posters have corrected you on. As they said - it’s on your payslip for them to see. Just because you were unaware does not mean the bank did not consider it.

I agree with other poster comments about majority of students now being given loans without realising they are actually signing themselves upto 25 years of additional tax rather than a loan repayment - the government have deliberately done this to ensure they get the maximum back. Had you started a thread discussing this, my answer would be entirely different

I paid mine off because the interest rate was the highest of all my financial products. It was slowly going down but I'd have paid a lot of interest before paying it off. In the years of low interest rates it was a cheap loan but that's no longer the case. The money I paid off is no longer being charged at 7% or so per year so that's a net financial gain as no savings account pays that

MSE has an article on this, OP:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-repay/

You're sort of right
It's not recommended to pay it off because it's a safe plan not because it's a cheap loan
If you lost your job/became too ill to work/die then you don't pay the loan back as it's based on what you earn. Therefore it can be risky to pay it off in full in case something happens. Therefore if you had a lump sum to pay it off it makes more sense to pay that lump sum against other debt such as mortgage
Martin Lewis is trying to rebrand it as "graduate tax" based on the fact with the new plans very few people will ever pay it off
Im in NI so I am on plan 1. I started on 27k and 11 years later have 10k left. I pay around 180 a month and would love to have that extra 180 a month in my pocket lol but I feel lucky in a way because I am doing a job that my degree requires. A lot of people are paying for degrees they have never really used.
People saying it doesn't affect mortgages - it 100% affects your affordability of what you can borrow as it's a payment coming out of your salary each month.
Also a lot of people I know in NI end up going down south to ROI to work and never have to pay their loans back. SLC don't/can't automatically take it from their salary because they aren't in the UK anymore.

I don't think I do earn 'so little' though, I earn a smidge over £30k, which isn't too bad at all considering I'm part time. Ok it's not mega bucks, but I'm not a low earner. My point was there's no incentive to pay it off as the interest is much more than the repayments.

The current threshold is pretty low, by the time current students graduate if they work full time in any job they'll probably start having to pay it back straight away. And it's for 40 years

In my case, because it was sold off without my consent. I had been repaying, then had some low income years due to ML and a couple of other issues. But I always knew I'd earn a lot more quite soon. And I'd have told them as much, if they'd asked my permission to sell the loan off.

Soon after, by coincidence, I found out that you can go over the threshold if it's not all in the same job, iyswim. And my career was going that way anyway. So no, I don't feel any personal responsibility to make any repayments to whatever hedge fund bought it. And the state sold off 1.2 million loans, so there'll be a lot of us.

I am repaying "some of it". I am repaying what I am required every month. I don't know how you managed to establish that I pay nothing since I stated many times that I pay 9% over the threshold as per my contractual agreement.
I would have thought reading comprehension was high on a list of requirements for a degree....

The student loan isn't really intended to be paid back in full. The government know that most people won't be able to pay it back in full.

The loan levels are set and the repayment levels are set. There is no requirement to overpay until it is paid off.

So the only people it would benefit from doing so are very high earners who would eventualy pay it back over the repayment term but who would save a load of interest by paying it off early.

Even people who don't pay it back in full are paying it off monthly for (in my case) 30 years.

I just struggle to understand why people don't feel any personal responsibility to even repay some of it. Why is it ok to spend money that isn't yours?

It's not longer that cheap a loan !

Where is the incentive? What am I getting out of paying more? A gold medal? Your personal approval? None of these things matter more to me than a roof over my head and food on the table while doing the job I love.
To put things into perspective for you, I have to pay extra 13k a year just to cover interest without offsetting any of the capital. On the other hand, I can overpay my mortgage by the same amount which does directly benefit me. The choice is pretty obvious here.

At least that's making an attempt. 👍

I think that many people paying back the minimum will pay back the original amount, but the interest piling up means they’ll never clear it.

The fact that it's so big should be more incentive to attempt to pay some of it off.

I feel responsibility to fulfill my contractual obligations. The lender did not have to propose the terms but they did so having assessed their risks. I am guessing you went to uni before the tuition fee increase so you have no real concept of how fast a 90k debt grows over the years with 9% interest.

A degree might have been wasted on you lol you seem to be lacking in critical thinking

I couldn't stay at home. Parents kept cranking out kids (no room) and it was a tiny town on west coast so no uni in commutable distance really.
Accepted the debt. Got a degree (and shock horror a second with a graduate loan).

Graduated into a fab career and nearly cleared the lot now. Still managing to overpay the mortgage.

The city I went to uni inI met my husband so that massive debt you couldn't bear to carry around got me two degrees, A fab well paying career, gorgeous baby, lovely husband and house I love in a nice area. Worth every penny to me and millions like me 🤷🏻‍♀️

You must see how all this unpaid debt doesn't just exist in isolation though, right? You feel no responsibility to even attempt to pay back what you spent? This highlights what's wrong with the mentality in the UK.