Australia_bound?

Does anyone have experience of paying UK student loan from Australia?

How do they trace you to Aus and find out your salary etc to begin claiming the money back? I'm very unsure how it all works unless the person who takes out the loan is very honest and seeks out ways to pay back the money!

Bob

yeah, you keep them informed...but you'll have to earn a fair wedge before you need to pay them back anyway...and can always just bung them once a year for what you'd owe via something like xe.com to your bank in the UK and doing a cheque in the mail.

doing a runner on your debt could well bite you in the arse later on otherwise.

Australia_bound?

Thanks for reply Bob
Info wasn't for me as I don't have a student loan , but still sounds like someone would have to put themselves out to keep up payments. I'll recommend that they pay it off prior to going sounds much easier!

willkerr

Hi there

Student loans from the Uk are a bit of a nightmare. You have to inform the Student Loans Co that you are leaving the country. They then expect you to tell them when you are earning over the equivalent threshold (it was around GBP 15k so whatever that is in dollars). once you reach the threshold you have to start paying your student loan back. In the Uk this is fixed as a percentage of what you earn over the threshold. However, when you are abroad you have to pay a fixed amount each month (this was GBP 250). This is much more than most people would pay each month on a student loan in the UK. In the end we were lucky in that we could just pay ours off and start afresh. The real pain with student loans is that they never disappear, if you run off and don't pay them they stay, unlike credit card bills etc which get 'forgotten' after a period.

Hope that's useful

Cheers

Will

PS If you are away and paying them it's better to do month as I believe the interest is calculated daily/monthly not yearly!

Bob

they do get wiped, but I think when your 50 *l*

Ozzidoc

Or when you die!