Student loan horror stories

[Sammy900]

In light of the Treasury launching a review of student loan repayment terms in the U.K I was wondering what individuals experiences are? Welcome stories outside the U.K too to compare.

Yes I've become a bit obsessed with it now I know something might be done finally. It's a diabolical system designed to trap graduates into a debt for life and as others have said, is a scandal.

I'll start, but I fear that my story won't be as bad as some others:

Took out the original Plan 1 in 2000. Total loan was 23k.
Up until today I have paid back 15.5k.
Interest accrued so far is 12.5k
I still owe 20k
It's 26 years later and it's hardly budged!

Shocking isn't it. 😡

Plan 2 and post grad. I owe about 100k. Costs me nearly £300 a month in repayments and doesn’t cover the interest.

£23k in 2000 would now be £44k so if you now owe £20k you have paid back over half.

My kids have these loans and are bitter.

What shocked me the most was Rachel Reeves saying live to camera that the government need the income (extortionate interest) ‘to reduce NHS waiting lists’.

That is a really very outrageous thing to say.

1. The NHS is a failing money pit that should be put out of its misery.

2. The NHS is supposed to be paid for with general taxation.

3. young people without assets are being fleeced to support general government spend.

4. The NHS is barely used by graduates. Once again it’s an example of inter-generational unfairness. The young are subsidising the boomers. By the time graduates need their hips and knees replacing, they will have to pay again, from their own pocket, because the NHS won’t exist.

5. Reeves said it in such a complacent way, as though she believes that anything which suppprts the NHS is automatically, de-facto, immune from criticism. Like ‘it’s paying for the sacred NHS. So don’t you dare question it’

grrrr 😡🤬

23k for then is a lot as the tuition was probably 1k a year at most 3k. And back 2002 or so i was only on about 12k a year so its like 2years pre tax earnings.

its the 9k thats completely unreasonable

I feel very lucky I avoided them as when I went in 2001 it was well known re the interest rate etc (you just needed to research them to see that) but so hard to avoid as it was very vocally being sold....I was lucky that my course was paid for fees wise and due to my parents very low income I was given a bursery from my local area (first person to uni in family thing) and a book fund from charities in my local area and I worked every single holiday and weekend I scrapped through without getting a student loan. Scrapped as I never was able to go out or do any uni things due to my lack of funds but being first in family to uni I was in shock I was there. I've friends who are paying more in interest than the loan. It's was mis sold unless you read the small print

That's infuriating, backwards logic and kind of abusive behaviour, making out that people have been ripped off for years in order to pay for the NHS. This wrong doing has nothing to do with how the money is spent on public services.
grrrr - they could just say anything in that case

Plan 2 - Left uni with £56k debt, completed a Masters and then PGCE. I’ve been working as a teacher for 9 years, checked my debt the other day now at £95k.

There's a petition on the mn petitions site regarding the huge interest rate, it's worth a sign and share as widely as posdible. Expats can sign too. I don't particularly like the wording on the petition but at least whoever set it up had the ooomph to do so

well said. They said the same about farmers and IHT increases, that it was for the NHS. They roll that line out so that nobody dare criticise their decisions because its "for the NHS".

If I’ve understood correctly, the chap who designed plan 2 said in the design was middle and high earners covering the costs for the graduates who never get close to repaying. (Though he doesn’t agree with what’s happened since then)

Rachel Reeves has since confused matters by talking about nhs. Aldo by now talking about child poverty. But it doesn’t matter as she first said it was ‘fair and reasonable’ she should not be allowed to recover from that.