Have you paid off your student loan?

If so, how old were you?

Considering whether to pay mine off in a lump sum, as I think I have about 1 year left and interest rates are higher than I’d get in a bank

I’m on Plan 1, I haven’t paid it off yet but plan to in the next couple of years. It would be nice to get rid of it, it’s a big chunk out of the take home pay.

Logged into SLC, and the interest rate has gone up to 5%. Well, personally if I didn’t need the money for anything else, and had an emergency fund aside, then I would just pay it off.

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I’m sure I read a Martin Lewis thing saying that paying off your student loan shouldn’t be a priority. Basically you should just see it like a tax and “live with it”.

If you have credit cards, loans or mortgages you’d be better off taking a chunk off them. I’ll see if I can find it or dreamt it :thinking:

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Yeah you’re right. I think it’s a bit different if you’re towards the end and know you will pay it off. The point about mortgages makes sense if you’re not fixed and or not already overpaying.

Curious I logged into my account and they list the below considerations for making an overpayment:

Depending when you took out the loan, it can be written off after 25 years too if you’re anywhere near this.

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This is also my understanding^

I never went to Uni so obviously don’t have a student loan but from what people tell me it’s not worth paying off.

On plan 2, did 1 year of uni and ended with about 17k of debt by the time I started paying it back.

3 years later I’m down to 12k. It should be paid off in 5 years for me, so I’m not bothering to pay it off early, just treating it like an additional 9% tax.

I do begrudge the 7% interest though

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Plan 1 loan, I paid the remaining 4k off a Few years ago, as I knew I didn’t need the money for anything else, and had built up a second emergency fund.

Pay it off if you’re 100% sure your circumstances won’t get any worse and you’re at a low remaining amount.

If you need the money back from overpaying, you can’t. So you need to be sure you can afford it

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Plan 1 here and 30.

I’m paying mine off in full at the end of this month.

I’ve already opted to pay via DD as I’m coming to the end of my repayments, but that takes a while to stop paying via your payslip. I’m expecting it to have stopped this month, then I’ll call up and make the final payment.

I’m looking forward to the little pay rise :smiling_face:

I should also add that if I don’t pay early, I’d make my final payment in August and that would result in a significant overpayment that I’d then need to claim back.
The interest rate on the loan at 5% is also much higher than what I’m making in my Monzo savings pot too, so may as well put the cash to good use.

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Plan 4(?) Scotland here, graduated 10 years ago and started payments a couple years after that I think. I’ve about £4.5k left to pay as I just had the maintenance grant so my loan was about £9k total after 3 years.

I’m not gonna make any additional payment. Even though the interest is going up to 5%, I pay around £50 a month towards it and it’s just not worth me paying it in a lump sum when I need the money now and I’ll pay it off anyway before the 25 years is up. If I could afford to, I probably would. But I’ve kinda learnt to ignore it :sweat_smile:

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£63,731.82
Plan 2
6.9%

Never going to pay that off

:sob: :sob: :sob:

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When you’re about a year away from completing your payments you’ll get a letter from the Student Loans Company telling you that you’re eligible for the ‘Prevent Over Replayment Scheme’ - basically switching from paying through your salary to monthly direct debit.

You should do that first, then after a few months (maybe 6) once you’re sure you won’t need the money, pay it off in full.

If you don’t switch to DD first, it can be quite difficult to stop repayments via your salary if you pay the loan off in full, so you’d potentially end up having to claim money back.

The question you’ve got to ask yourself is if you were to get laid off today, would you have a big enough safety-net to see you through? If the answer is no, then wait a little longer before you pay it off in full.

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Yeah - I had that letter a couple of months ago, although haven’t yet switched over to DD. Given it’s only a few grand left, I’m thinking I’ll just pay it off in a lump. I think there’s an option to get some kind of ‘final balance’ letter if. you want to pay it off. I feel very sorry for those with loans above £50k… I thought mine was bad at £32k!

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Managed to sidestep paying anything, all written off when I got to 65, probably not possible today.

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Yes that’s exactly what I’m planning to do, but they can also tell you over the phone if you call them. They take into account any repayments that you’ve made via your salary that haven’t reached them yet and interest.

The issue you’ll still have though is stopping repayments via your salary. For some reason that still takes months, so I’d still recommend switching to DD first to break that link.

Ah didn’t know that. Good advice.

For reference, when I switched to DD, this is what it said on the letter:

When I switched to DD, the stop order took effect in the very next payroll round. So 2 bonus months for me! :grin:

I’m about 12 months out from the finish right now, due in May 2024.

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I’m so jealous of some peoples balances on here.

I’ve had my loan forever and still owe £9k on Plan 1. The only time it bothers me is when it’s end of year bonus time and they take a larger cut!

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When you did that, did they also decide that your monthly repayments should be significantly lower than what you were repaying via your salary too?

For me, if I did nothing I would have finished paying in August this year. Now that I’ve moved to DD, repayments only end in December 2024, which would actually cost me more in interest.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter because I’m planning to repay in full before the first direct debit is taken anyway, but I just thought it was really weird.