I am coming closer to paying off my student loan and I known the student loan company isn’t known for being particularly accurate with the way it calculates loans and payments but there are a couple things I wanted to test with anyone else who has looked into this.
has anyone else looked at past statements and payments plus interest since to see if it equals your current statement balance? 15 months ago I owed £9k in those 15 months I have made 4.5k payments and had about £150 added in interest. Current balance is £7.5k…
looking at my statement I can see that interest is charged monthly but until recently payments were accumulated and only removed from the balance once a year at the end of the financial year (even though payments are made monthly). It does not look like this is taken into account on interest payments and your effectively paying interest on the amount you owed at the previous financial year for a full year. Doesn’t feel right, has anyone else noticed this and investigated?
I am trying to contact them to see what’s going on (probably that my past statement is wrong… and that I signed something that allowed interest to be calculated in this way…)
In short, the student loans company don’t have up to date payment records, as they only get the money once a year, even though you pay monthly in your pay check. They get all that you have Payed in that year in April.
This ends up with most people over paying for a few months and the student loan company was not the best at chasing people who have done this. Eg, you finish paying in sept, but your repayment is still taken out of your payslip till April.
What I did, when I got within 2 years of finishing, I phoned them and over payed the 2 years worth, With the hope this would avoid this problem. They still had to estimate how much I had paid in that tax year. So I ended up over paying a bit but after the following tax year, I phoned them back and they transferred the money into my account straight away.
Your second point is true, and has been an issue that student unions have been arguing for years, but students (mainly) don’t seem to care, I know I didn’t when I was a student. So nothing gets changed. I only realised when I was in your situation but by that point it’s to late, I remember the flyers I was given, that ended up in the bin of the bar I was heading to…
One exception might be if you’re looking to get a mortgage - although it’s not on your credit file it does affect how much you can borrow. Paid the remaining chunk off mine a few years ago for this reason. Otherwise, agree very few reasons to do it.
The new website boasts showing up to date loan status, no more than a month out, which is why I am a little alarmed that it’s £3k higher than I was expecting.
And your probably right about the flyers and union campaigns, I doubt uni me was paying much attention or even understood either. The latest statement I requested does show that now the payment at are received monthly too, which will make a difference for future students.
