Was I the only one who didn't realise what you start paying interest on your student loan from the first day of year 1 ?

[CobsNobs]

For some reason I had heard (maybe misheard) Martin Lewis saying that you don't have to worry about student loans until you finish uni and start working and in my head took that to also mean that you wouldn't start accruing interest until that time.
Obviously I was completely wrong but just in case anyone else had made the same assumption I am posting here.
My son is doing a 4 year course and will be borrowing £54k but at the end of year 4 that sum will have increased to approx £64k.
Scary!

(In my defence I am not from the UK and never had a student loan).

Perhaps also worth repeating the oddity that a few pps have noted already.

That being that you only make repayments from jobs where you are over the plan threshold, not for combined income.

so taking @Cranmer ’s point. Plan 2 has a tiered rate. Single job at £51,245 currently attracts a 7.3% interest rate on the outstanding loan amount. With the repayment threshold currently at £28,470 they’d pay 9% of £22,775, or just under £2050 in a year or around £171 / month.

The same income evenly split between 2 jobs would see each job fall beneath the threshold, so although still earning the same gross combined salary the monthly repayment would in this instance be £0.

Not sure whether the interest rate would be 4.3% as each job pays less than £28,470; or whether interest on the loan is based on combined total salary. So a not wholly unreasonable income, particularly if in a dual income household, and zero repayment though the outstanding loan will get ever bigger as nothing is paid off.

I'm pretty sure plan 5 is 40 years?

If you have to do a self assessment tax return the jobs get combined. I received a bill for £2900 due to this cropping up for one year over the child benefit threshold as I got a second job to get a mortgage. Luckily for me the settlement date was in sight so I took it on the chin (no other option obviously!) But it would have really hurt if I had no chance of a full repayment.