To not pay off my student loan (current SAHM) even though we can afford it?

[SwissSarah]

I got my degree 10 years ago and have about £10K to pay from my student loan. I never earned enough to pay back any of it pre kids (did low paid community work) and have been a SAHM for 5 years and plan to be for at least the next 5. I anticipate never working full time and probably doing lots of voluntary stuff in the community as that's what I love doing. (DH earns well so no pressure to earn myself)

My DH thinks we should pay it back as I borrowed it. I think that I am contributing massively to my local community and giving back in so many other ways and if I'm not earning enough then I shouldn't worry about not paying it back. What do you think??

I'm not paying mine atm. I have an old style loan so the threshold is around 28k atm (I believe). I was paying it when I was earning enough. At £130/month (old style loans had fixed payments, mortgage style) it was a big bill. There's no way I would expect dh to pay it on my behalf, it's debt I accrued before I met him.

The "what if everyone did it" arguments are a bit nonsensical really, it's unlikely that more than a small minority would earn below the (new) threshold.

Imo we have an education system where kids are pushed to go to university even though there may not be a clear career path for them. There are more graduates than there are graduate jobs once they've finished. This means that, as a society, we're going to have to accept that there will be a proportion of people who never repay their loans. I'm sure this has all been factored into the financial wranglings that go on behind the scenes.

I've got no intention of paying mine back - it was imposed by people who had benefitted from free education (and who also had the right to claim unemployment benefit during the summer iirc). I considered it unjust then and I still do.

As for your dh paying it off, my dh paid his when he hit right the level of earnings. The govt didn't say, "actually his income is 50% Aderyn's and therefore he is now below the income limit at which the loan becomes repayable". No, they took the money. They cannot have it both ways and view his money as yours and expect him to repay your loan.

" , it's unlikely that more than a small minority would earn below the (new) threshold."
Really? But this thread is about people who rarely work or work pt in low paid roles.

stealth I agree that is their right, but currently the playing field is not level.
If families rathervthan individuals were obliged to pay off all graduate loans irrespective of imbalance in earnings then it would be better financially if there was only one graduate.
It would also be sensible if that one was as the higher potential earner
The way society is currently structured that means financially it would be better for a higher learning graduate male to marry a woman with no debt, ergo, lower level of education.
So currently the debt is individual, and that actually encourages women to persue education. Making the debt joint, doesn't. If they benefit financially from their education they pay their debt, but the current system is, I think, morally correct, and imposing other moral codes over that obscures that very important point.
Although of course I would prefer that women were in a different position in the first place.

Pay it back! Why should those of us not eligible for student loans have to fork out for our fees personally when others like you get to basically have them paid by the taxpayer - I'm effectively having to pay twice - once for me and again via tax for you!!!
Whatever happened to doing the right thing?!!!!!

Helloitsme87 - where do you think all the money comes from? There are NHS trusts cancelling hip operations in older people because the pot is empty and yet people still take take take. Don't go to University if you have no intention of getting a 'graduate' job, there's plenty of other things to do.

Compulsory payment would stop all the fluffy degrees and non payers and then universities would go back to being for those that actually want a career and need the education behind it.

A quick look stateside suggests it's rather more complex than that. Tertiary education enrolment became increasingly more common over the past couple of decades as fees rose. They were not all doing non fluffy degrees by any stretch of the imagination. In this decade, they've dropped slightly. There are very complex reasons why people access or don't access higher education, so you're hugely over-simplifying.

Theres just so much money wasted and the staff could have been teaching subjects, pupils etc who intended actually doing something with the degree.

For this to be true, there'd need to be an equal number of people who wanted to do something with the degree but weren't able to get into uni because all the people who didn't were better qualified. Which seems unlikely given the expansion of HE in recent decades, so actually what would probably have happened is that a lot of the staff wouldn't have been teaching anyone at all.

I'm not sure why doing something with the degree is being equated with paying the loan back anyway? We've now had a number of examples of people using theirs and not repaying/not going to repay in full. Because some jobs aren't well paid and not everyone works full time.

Pay it back. I find it hard to understand why you wouldn't or the mentality of those telling you not to.

"Compulsory payment would stop all the fluffy degrees "
All degrees are to some extent esoteric and "fluffy"
You seem to be advocating apprenticeships instead, which is fine, but a different thing.

It would only stop fluffy degrees for poor people actually

University loans need reform, but that's not to say the OP needs to personally suffer for that.

There's no guarantee it would even do that. You'd have to do a lot more than ramp up the immediate costs. There'd need to be significant cultural change also, which would include ending the recent phenomenon whereby a degree is a prerequisite for a lot of jobs that don't actually require one.

It could be argued that you are working by raising children, who will grow up to benefit society, pay tax, and benefit the economic system. So I wouldn't feel bad.

This thread is a really interesting insight into human behaviour.

If people don't want to pay their loans off because they're not personally earning above the threshold, that's completely fine from a legal perspective.

But rather than just admitting they're not paying off the loan because they don't have to and they'd rather keep the money and spend it on other things, people tell themselves they're not paying it off because Amazon don't pay enough tax/they're doing voluntary work/women have lower paying jobs/they're don't agree with student loans anyway/the people who introduced loans got their education for free.

Therefore not only do they get to keep the money, they get to occupy the moral high ground as well. Win win .

I'm pretty sure that most people go to university with every intention of getting a well paid job afterwards. Life then throws shite at you or decisions are made to benefit your family that change your priorities or your (mental, physical, logistical) ability to work in those roles.

The loans were granted to the individual, with specific terms and conditions. No one else, even if it's your partner or your household income generally, would be considered liable for any other personal debt. If you decide to pay it from household income anyway, that's your choice of course, but I don't think anyone should feel morally obligated to do so.

The NHS being underfunded is irrelevant to this. I'd far rather pay an extra penny in national insurance, on all my income, than to repay a loan that I'm not required to under terms and conditions agreed by both parties at the time of the loan.

wildbelle oh and I forgot the "raising children" justification.

It's not that the OP isn't paying back the loan because it's money she'd rather spend on other things. No, she isn't paying it back because she's taking a moral stand to highlight the important job of raising kids .

It's not as simple as that red. It is possible to not pay it back because legally you don't have to and object to loans on moral grounds.
There is nothing morally wrong with adhering to the legal contract agreed to when the loan was taken.
And all those who say a spouse should pay it, I refer you to my point upthread that if each partner's money was considered shared then that would often put the higher earning partner's wage below the level at which repayment starts.

You should pay it back- it was a loan. I'd love to be doing voluntary work, helping the community etc but have debt to pay (paid my loan off a couple of years ago after working hard!)
Also surely if you want to buy a house and apply for a mortgage it will affect your credit rating?

Wildbelle, there's no guarantee of that though is there? If they follow the parent role model, they won't be working at all.

The notion you can only raise children if unemployed is simply daft, we'd have hardly any nurses, teachers, gp's etc if that was the case. It's strange that men don't lose the skills to work when they become parents.

I do think it is a bit of an anomaly that a single parent with a load of kids with work and tax credits could have to pay it back but a SAHM with a millionaire husband doesn't. I wont pay mine and dont feel bad about it, if I earned enough I would. If husband of OP disagrees with it he doesnt have to sign the form that he is supporting her.

Student loans don't have impact on credit rating!

No there's no guarantees, but neoliberalism would be kinda screwed if people stopped having kids. By the sounds of it, OPs DH must be on a fairly decent wage to offer to pay back loan and for OP to be able to be a SAHM. If that set up works for their family, it's a totally valid one. IMO student loans company are likely to have factored in that people (usually women) may not be at their full earning potential for several years because of raising children. I don't think it's anything to feel guilty about. If OP decides to sit on her arse for the rest of her working life just to avoid paying back her loan, that's a different matter.

When I applied for my mortgage I had to state any debts/loans including student loan.

Also what about other people who work for the community and have to pay it back? - nurses, teachers etc

Can anyone explain why in their view it is morally wrong not to pay back a loan if you're not earning over the threshold but your partner is?

aderyn yes of course it's possible for people to not want to pay back their loan because they want to keep the money and for them to object to student loans on principle.

But it's the former that leads people to not pay back their loans, not the latter.

How is not paying back your loan an effective protest against its existence? Because if enough don't pay it back then the government will just decide it's not worth the bother and scrap tuition fees as a result?

Don't pay it back, you don't have to. They should never have introduced loans in the first place.

I will never pay mine back, firstly because I'm unlikely to ever earn enough to be over the threshold, and secondly because I live abroad so they'll never chase me up for repayment.