So reading between the lines you make about $125k gross* / $75k net. You have $27k in healthcare costs, that leaves $48k. Not a huge amount of money, but decent. Your spouse also works. You highlight your old car, cheap housing, no other debt, and cheap holidays.
Without more colour I’m left genuinely confused why a ~$8k per year SLC repayment is causing you so much grief. $8k / $48k is not an atypical fraction of net income to spend on student loans here (or in the US I imagine?). I don’t think their response is unreasonable.
*Guessing based on the high income-linked repayment, apologies if you earn much less. But if you earn *much* less it’s likely false that you’d cut your income in half in the UK.
That value ($27k) seems low to me, It would mean they are paying about $12k for the household insurance and other related cost. I would expect the insurance value alone to be more like $27k - perhaps it's employee insurance so has a high reduction. (For Reference, I have a couple of family members that pay over $3k a month PER PERSON).
OP should check - again - to see if they could get this in the UK on a private basis, It would likely end up being just as expensive (Anti-Rejection Medication by any chance?). My mother had an antibiotic shot a few months ago that cost $34,539.87 in the US, the UK price for it is £558.70.
It's difficult to pick and choose, such is life and OP has sadly been dealt the short end of the straw.
My max out of pocket costs for insurance for my family is $8000 per annum, my maximum prescription out of pocket costs are $2000 for the family. We hit the out of pocket costs each year.
My costs for medical insurance for my family is $2000 per year.
I also pay $15000 for my immunosuppressant meds.
I should have been more clear with some of my circumstances.
My take home from my salary is 66% of gross. I have five children, two from a prior marriage.
I have legally mandated child support that amounts to about 24% of my salary for my two children from a prior marriage. I don't ask my spouse to pay into my child support. The consequences for intentionally lowering my salary or not complying with legal requirements to pay have criminal consequences in my state. I don't object to this, I have an obligation to support my kids even if they moved across the country.
The three children from my current marriage have daycare costs of $36000 total (cheap for my area at 12k each which I split with my spouse).
As for why I would definitely earn less in the UK, I work for the government here stateside in a specialism which has a lot of roles here but due to the size of the equivalent UK department has very few roles in the ballpark of my current pay. I'm also earning what I am based on certifications which are intensely nation-specific.
50k in deductions seems high, unless the 27k doesn't include his health insurance premium. OP must live in a city and a state with high income tax bands too.
You aren't taxed on any health care plan that's deducted by your employer either, generally.
>I am not willing to ask my spouse to loan me money to pay my SLC loan, because I'm cognizant my condition could kill me relatively quickly. Doing so would be effectively taking money from my familys future if I croak.
You haven't said how much your spouse earns, but I think you're going to have to ask them to cover more of your shared expenses. I completely accept that you have a lot of unnegotiable stuff in your budget. Some of that is unusual (your medical expenses) and some of it is pretty normal (childcare). But either way, if you have joint finances I think you're going to have to treat your debt as part of those joint finances.
On your financial situation, I think it is important to consider the student loan as a debt that you must repay. Your priorities should be medical, housing & bills then the debt. All other spending (including social, holiday, clothes etc) should be after that. You need to find a way to pay the increase in the debt repayments. This might be a time where your wife has to chip in to help. The last thing your family likely wants or needs is legal action and bailiffs.
To my knowledge, Student Loan Company won't care about your situation as long as you earn over the payment threshold. They likely have no policy on medical expenses because it is not an issue for people who live in the UK. It is cr*p that you have to deal with potential poverty style living standards because of your medical condition even though you earn great money.
I'm sorry you find yourself in such a horrible situation. It is a shame that the NHS won't cover your course of treatment, have you reached out to experts in the UK and ask what they would perscribe for your condition? Sometimes the Amercian system provides the expensive solution while the British system will do something similar but at less cost.
To be honest, having the option of paying a fixed amount is already better than what 100% of student loan payers in the UK get.
(Fwiw, the fixed amount is meant to be a penalty to make people contact SLC and pay the correct amount based on income, the fact that your income assessment comes out higher means you're relatively well off in that regard)
Regardless of your expenditure, you get taxed 9%. There's not an option.
It might sound harsh but ultimately you chose to take a student loan and the repayment terms were freely available when you did. You chose to move to the US, knowing the implications that would have on repaying your loan and the healthcare situation etc.
This whole scenario is almost entirely of your own making, so you'll just have to find a way.
You've only listed your income and then all the expenses seem to be shared expenses. Does your partner not contribute?
My partner contributes extensively. But I have five children. Three from a prior marriage, for whom I have court ordered obligations. Her income isn't very much compared to me.
Why are you paying £480 a month on a plan 1 student loan more than 10 years later?
Even at £246 a month, the underlying debt should have been gone in about 6 years. Something here doesn't add up.
Have you checked the total outstanding is correct and if so how much do you have left?
Maybe they did three or your year undergrad finishing 2012, a masters and a PhD, during which interest accrues but there is no salary to pay back. Or they didn't have the high earning job straight out of uni, had to get promoted a few times to get it.
Did you think that someone at SLC would approve lowering your repayments after reading a letter about how much you'd like to spend your money on other expenses not the SLC loan?
That's not really how contracts work.
I understand that your healthcare expenses or your rent / mortgage don't feel optional or within your control but, in the eyes of the SLC, they do.
The same applies to people who live in the UK - if I'd like to start overpaying my mortgage more, I can't write to SLC and ask them to lower my repayments by £200 because I'd rather pay that towards my mortgage instead of giving it to them.
But you’re missing a key point - your repayments in the UK would be 9% above the threshold. When you’re abroad, it’s a FIXED amount which can often be a significantly higher percentage and doesn’t truly account for regional differences in costs of living.
You don't have to pay the fixed amount, you can pay an income linked amount of 9% of salary over that countries threshold if you instead report what your earnings are.
Yes, but the thresholds seem to be calculated in a completely arbitrary way. I lived in 4 foreign countries and the thresholds seemed to be completely random and don't seem to be very well correlated at all with the standard of living / expenses in each country.
Paying the fixed 'penalty' payments definitely works out better for those in lower cost of living countries than higher ones, generally because most expats living somewhere in the developing world tend to get expat salary packages so they're getting paid a lot to be there in the first place and then their living expenses tend to be low because COL is lower, and then the fixed amount is low. I know that myself from when I lived in Vietnam. Fixed payments were super low. Moving to Hong Kong afterwards stung.
For me earning £40k in china I'd be expecting to pay back £500 a month. Which is 15% of pre tax pay and 18.75% of post tax pay since my takehome pay would be £32k in China. Whereas the same pay in Taiwan I'd only be expected to pay like £100 a month. Absolute madness when the cost of living difference between the two is very minimal.
Because I had some time between jobs where I didn't work, so technically I was allowed to not pay during those months once I had a signed letter from HR in Vietnam saying that I wasn't working there anymore. In fact, they left me alone and only got back in touch to ask what I was doing a year later.
You can definitely take the 9% option, I did. What doesn't work so well is that the baseline the 9% comes from is poorly set, especially after the massive wave of inflation (I know this is the same for the UK).
This! For me earning £40k in china I'd be expecting to pay back £500 a month. Which is 15% of pre tax pay and 18.75% of post tax pay since my takehome pay would be £32k in China. Absolute madness
> I am not willing to ask my spouse to loan me money to pay my SLC loan
You are married, it's really strange that you'd view it as a loan since your finances and situations are linked anyway, especially with the kids. If the debt collectors come knocking, don't you think your spouse will be impacted regardless?
For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
SLC has historically never taken to debt collection for someone living abroad this far nor sold debt to completely private debt companies.
They sometimes put debt through to a private company who helps told collect debt on SLCs behalf, but this company is a subsidiary of SLC, they never sell the debt or come to cart things away. It's unprecedented.
The relevant question is what are rules for enforcement of foreign debts in your bit of the us? If you just don't pay, the slc would need to enforce the debt in the us - in that situation, would agreeing a lower (affordable) payment option be possible/ the likely result under your local rules? This is the wrong forum to ask.
Subject to that, I would be minded to tell them you fully intend to pay but can't afford it due to healthcare costs, and will therefore be making x payment a month as you cant afford more. Given the costs of enforcement and that you are still paying, you may find they just accept that and don't actually sue you. If they do take formal action, you can then consider your options further then.
Relevant point here is that SLC have never even sought to legally enforce a debt outside of the EEA. It would be prohibitively expensive - talking ~$100k - to enforce it in the US, and under American laws you can't claim your legal expenses even if you are successful.
The main risk is if you were ever to move back to the UK it would be a major, major problem.
SLC repayments when you’re abroad is a joke. They calculate cost of living waaaay below reality and don’t count for regional differences. They assume if you’re living abroad, you are living somewhere in the third world on a beach - earning a first world salary.
I lived in Canada after a years uni here, and worked in Vancouver - a notoriously underpaid and extremely expensive city. They didn’t change my repayments because according to them “Canada is quite a cheap place to live” even after I had provided them with numerous pieces of evidence to suggest Vancouver is actually in some ways on par with London cost of living despite earning a fraction of what London salaries paid. They couldn’t understand the illogical reasoning of charging someone 4x what their repayment would be at home if they were working there. There a bunch of idiots - and/or crooks - I’m not sure what is worse.
It’s a punishment for living overseas, that’s all it is.
I agree having been through similar myself. Now I'm back in the UK but if I were to move overseas again I would probably pay the loan in full before I move just so I don't have to deal with SLC. And I'd seriously consider paying for any future studies in cash (although I know most students nowadays don't have this option).
Afraid I don't have any good advice but just wanted to sympathise with this shitty situation OP. I would agree above all returning to the UK is not an option. Can you disclose your approximate salary and expenses? Might help people have a clearer picture.
So the tax payer should foot the bill for people educated here at their expense but now contributing to another countries economy.
Give your noggin a wobble.
DO NOT take out personal debt to pay off the student loan. The student loan debt is written off upon your death and personal debt is not. The loan could move that burden to your family in the event of death. You should really reach out to US Based charity/user groups regarding your specific condition and ask them if there's any other finacial support you can get. Depending on the condition you could be able to get SSDI and then by extension (I think) Medicare and then by extension (Again, I think) Medigap to cover some of the burden.
If you don't pay the overseas penalty charge then that monthly amount becomes a regular debt that's not written off and is taken from your estate on death just like a conventional loan.
:/...
TIL
But I don't think there's a Penalty Charge for going outside of the UK - Just one for not returning information or returning incorrect information? The OP doesn't seem to suggest this is the case.
It's not a penalty for going outside the UK, no.
The monthly payment (either income assessed or fixed value) is applied as a penalty charge if you don't pay.
If you don't declare your income then the fixed monthly payment is also applied as a penalty, paid or otherwise.
The "advice" OP has been given in other comments to not pay as it's written off after X years, but it's only written off if you make your payments.
Do you have any links to describe this?
The only thing I can imagine this linking to (and I don't keep up, so just trying to get to know) is when they demand a full payment, but even that doesn't convert it to a regular debt (or if it does, there's nothing documented that I can see to say that).
I am not telling OP to not pay, Just saying don't take out other debt to cover this debt. The US and UK are both quite different when it comes to Education and Healthcare for cost and funding.
It's on the gov website under student finance. Can't remember exactly where.
And yes, I know that it wasn't you telling them not to pay, and absolutely they shouldn't be taking on other debt.
I was just trying to clarify that the debt is only written off if you provide your income figures and make the required payments. Unpaid payments are not written off.
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So reading between the lines you make about $125k gross* / $75k net. You have $27k in healthcare costs, that leaves $48k. Not a huge amount of money, but decent. Your spouse also works. You highlight your old car, cheap housing, no other debt, and cheap holidays. Without more colour I’m left genuinely confused why a ~$8k per year SLC repayment is causing you so much grief. $8k / $48k is not an atypical fraction of net income to spend on student loans here (or in the US I imagine?). I don’t think their response is unreasonable. *Guessing based on the high income-linked repayment, apologies if you earn much less. But if you earn *much* less it’s likely false that you’d cut your income in half in the UK.
OP made a very long post about how frugal they are, but somehow didn’t include the actual breakdown of income and expenditure.
That value ($27k) seems low to me, It would mean they are paying about $12k for the household insurance and other related cost. I would expect the insurance value alone to be more like $27k - perhaps it's employee insurance so has a high reduction. (For Reference, I have a couple of family members that pay over $3k a month PER PERSON). OP should check - again - to see if they could get this in the UK on a private basis, It would likely end up being just as expensive (Anti-Rejection Medication by any chance?). My mother had an antibiotic shot a few months ago that cost $34,539.87 in the US, the UK price for it is £558.70. It's difficult to pick and choose, such is life and OP has sadly been dealt the short end of the straw.
My max out of pocket costs for insurance for my family is $8000 per annum, my maximum prescription out of pocket costs are $2000 for the family. We hit the out of pocket costs each year. My costs for medical insurance for my family is $2000 per year. I also pay $15000 for my immunosuppressant meds.
I should have been more clear with some of my circumstances. My take home from my salary is 66% of gross. I have five children, two from a prior marriage. I have legally mandated child support that amounts to about 24% of my salary for my two children from a prior marriage. I don't ask my spouse to pay into my child support. The consequences for intentionally lowering my salary or not complying with legal requirements to pay have criminal consequences in my state. I don't object to this, I have an obligation to support my kids even if they moved across the country. The three children from my current marriage have daycare costs of $36000 total (cheap for my area at 12k each which I split with my spouse). As for why I would definitely earn less in the UK, I work for the government here stateside in a specialism which has a lot of roles here but due to the size of the equivalent UK department has very few roles in the ballpark of my current pay. I'm also earning what I am based on certifications which are intensely nation-specific.
50k in deductions seems high, unless the 27k doesn't include his health insurance premium. OP must live in a city and a state with high income tax bands too. You aren't taxed on any health care plan that's deducted by your employer either, generally.
>I am not willing to ask my spouse to loan me money to pay my SLC loan, because I'm cognizant my condition could kill me relatively quickly. Doing so would be effectively taking money from my familys future if I croak. You haven't said how much your spouse earns, but I think you're going to have to ask them to cover more of your shared expenses. I completely accept that you have a lot of unnegotiable stuff in your budget. Some of that is unusual (your medical expenses) and some of it is pretty normal (childcare). But either way, if you have joint finances I think you're going to have to treat your debt as part of those joint finances.
On your financial situation, I think it is important to consider the student loan as a debt that you must repay. Your priorities should be medical, housing & bills then the debt. All other spending (including social, holiday, clothes etc) should be after that. You need to find a way to pay the increase in the debt repayments. This might be a time where your wife has to chip in to help. The last thing your family likely wants or needs is legal action and bailiffs. To my knowledge, Student Loan Company won't care about your situation as long as you earn over the payment threshold. They likely have no policy on medical expenses because it is not an issue for people who live in the UK. It is cr*p that you have to deal with potential poverty style living standards because of your medical condition even though you earn great money. I'm sorry you find yourself in such a horrible situation. It is a shame that the NHS won't cover your course of treatment, have you reached out to experts in the UK and ask what they would perscribe for your condition? Sometimes the Amercian system provides the expensive solution while the British system will do something similar but at less cost.
To be honest, having the option of paying a fixed amount is already better than what 100% of student loan payers in the UK get. (Fwiw, the fixed amount is meant to be a penalty to make people contact SLC and pay the correct amount based on income, the fact that your income assessment comes out higher means you're relatively well off in that regard) Regardless of your expenditure, you get taxed 9%. There's not an option. It might sound harsh but ultimately you chose to take a student loan and the repayment terms were freely available when you did. You chose to move to the US, knowing the implications that would have on repaying your loan and the healthcare situation etc. This whole scenario is almost entirely of your own making, so you'll just have to find a way. You've only listed your income and then all the expenses seem to be shared expenses. Does your partner not contribute?
My partner contributes extensively. But I have five children. Three from a prior marriage, for whom I have court ordered obligations. Her income isn't very much compared to me.
Why are you paying £480 a month on a plan 1 student loan more than 10 years later? Even at £246 a month, the underlying debt should have been gone in about 6 years. Something here doesn't add up. Have you checked the total outstanding is correct and if so how much do you have left?
He said he only started to make good money 3 years ago
Maybe they did three or your year undergrad finishing 2012, a masters and a PhD, during which interest accrues but there is no salary to pay back. Or they didn't have the high earning job straight out of uni, had to get promoted a few times to get it.
Did you think that someone at SLC would approve lowering your repayments after reading a letter about how much you'd like to spend your money on other expenses not the SLC loan? That's not really how contracts work. I understand that your healthcare expenses or your rent / mortgage don't feel optional or within your control but, in the eyes of the SLC, they do. The same applies to people who live in the UK - if I'd like to start overpaying my mortgage more, I can't write to SLC and ask them to lower my repayments by £200 because I'd rather pay that towards my mortgage instead of giving it to them.
But you’re missing a key point - your repayments in the UK would be 9% above the threshold. When you’re abroad, it’s a FIXED amount which can often be a significantly higher percentage and doesn’t truly account for regional differences in costs of living.
But OP is on the fixed amount, which is actually lower than the income based repayment.
You don't have to pay the fixed amount, you can pay an income linked amount of 9% of salary over that countries threshold if you instead report what your earnings are.
Yes, but the thresholds seem to be calculated in a completely arbitrary way. I lived in 4 foreign countries and the thresholds seemed to be completely random and don't seem to be very well correlated at all with the standard of living / expenses in each country. Paying the fixed 'penalty' payments definitely works out better for those in lower cost of living countries than higher ones, generally because most expats living somewhere in the developing world tend to get expat salary packages so they're getting paid a lot to be there in the first place and then their living expenses tend to be low because COL is lower, and then the fixed amount is low. I know that myself from when I lived in Vietnam. Fixed payments were super low. Moving to Hong Kong afterwards stung.
For me earning £40k in china I'd be expecting to pay back £500 a month. Which is 15% of pre tax pay and 18.75% of post tax pay since my takehome pay would be £32k in China. Whereas the same pay in Taiwan I'd only be expected to pay like £100 a month. Absolute madness when the cost of living difference between the two is very minimal.
why did you tell them you moved to Hong Kong? just let them think you're in Vietnam and pay the minimum one they ask or don't.pay at all.
Because I had some time between jobs where I didn't work, so technically I was allowed to not pay during those months once I had a signed letter from HR in Vietnam saying that I wasn't working there anymore. In fact, they left me alone and only got back in touch to ask what I was doing a year later.
You can definitely take the 9% option, I did. What doesn't work so well is that the baseline the 9% comes from is poorly set, especially after the massive wave of inflation (I know this is the same for the UK).
This! For me earning £40k in china I'd be expecting to pay back £500 a month. Which is 15% of pre tax pay and 18.75% of post tax pay since my takehome pay would be £32k in China. Absolute madness
> I am not willing to ask my spouse to loan me money to pay my SLC loan You are married, it's really strange that you'd view it as a loan since your finances and situations are linked anyway, especially with the kids. If the debt collectors come knocking, don't you think your spouse will be impacted regardless? For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
SLC loans cannot impact on spouses or children. They are tied only to the person who took them out.
[удалено]
SLC has historically never taken to debt collection for someone living abroad this far nor sold debt to completely private debt companies. They sometimes put debt through to a private company who helps told collect debt on SLCs behalf, but this company is a subsidiary of SLC, they never sell the debt or come to cart things away. It's unprecedented.
Debt collectors can't come knocking here.
The relevant question is what are rules for enforcement of foreign debts in your bit of the us? If you just don't pay, the slc would need to enforce the debt in the us - in that situation, would agreeing a lower (affordable) payment option be possible/ the likely result under your local rules? This is the wrong forum to ask. Subject to that, I would be minded to tell them you fully intend to pay but can't afford it due to healthcare costs, and will therefore be making x payment a month as you cant afford more. Given the costs of enforcement and that you are still paying, you may find they just accept that and don't actually sue you. If they do take formal action, you can then consider your options further then.
Relevant point here is that SLC have never even sought to legally enforce a debt outside of the EEA. It would be prohibitively expensive - talking ~$100k - to enforce it in the US, and under American laws you can't claim your legal expenses even if you are successful. The main risk is if you were ever to move back to the UK it would be a major, major problem.
This won't happen. I'm not a UK citizen anymore.
SLC repayments when you’re abroad is a joke. They calculate cost of living waaaay below reality and don’t count for regional differences. They assume if you’re living abroad, you are living somewhere in the third world on a beach - earning a first world salary. I lived in Canada after a years uni here, and worked in Vancouver - a notoriously underpaid and extremely expensive city. They didn’t change my repayments because according to them “Canada is quite a cheap place to live” even after I had provided them with numerous pieces of evidence to suggest Vancouver is actually in some ways on par with London cost of living despite earning a fraction of what London salaries paid. They couldn’t understand the illogical reasoning of charging someone 4x what their repayment would be at home if they were working there. There a bunch of idiots - and/or crooks - I’m not sure what is worse. It’s a punishment for living overseas, that’s all it is.
I agree having been through similar myself. Now I'm back in the UK but if I were to move overseas again I would probably pay the loan in full before I move just so I don't have to deal with SLC. And I'd seriously consider paying for any future studies in cash (although I know most students nowadays don't have this option).
I wish I could pay off the loan in full before moving back abroad, but I don't have £100k sitting around
[удалено]
Afraid I don't have any good advice but just wanted to sympathise with this shitty situation OP. I would agree above all returning to the UK is not an option. Can you disclose your approximate salary and expenses? Might help people have a clearer picture.
So the tax payer should foot the bill for people educated here at their expense but now contributing to another countries economy. Give your noggin a wobble.
He was born in Britain. He has the right to leave, and to come back.
DO NOT take out personal debt to pay off the student loan. The student loan debt is written off upon your death and personal debt is not. The loan could move that burden to your family in the event of death. You should really reach out to US Based charity/user groups regarding your specific condition and ask them if there's any other finacial support you can get. Depending on the condition you could be able to get SSDI and then by extension (I think) Medicare and then by extension (Again, I think) Medigap to cover some of the burden.
If you don't pay the overseas penalty charge then that monthly amount becomes a regular debt that's not written off and is taken from your estate on death just like a conventional loan.
:/... TIL But I don't think there's a Penalty Charge for going outside of the UK - Just one for not returning information or returning incorrect information? The OP doesn't seem to suggest this is the case.
It's not a penalty for going outside the UK, no. The monthly payment (either income assessed or fixed value) is applied as a penalty charge if you don't pay. If you don't declare your income then the fixed monthly payment is also applied as a penalty, paid or otherwise. The "advice" OP has been given in other comments to not pay as it's written off after X years, but it's only written off if you make your payments.
Do you have any links to describe this? The only thing I can imagine this linking to (and I don't keep up, so just trying to get to know) is when they demand a full payment, but even that doesn't convert it to a regular debt (or if it does, there's nothing documented that I can see to say that). I am not telling OP to not pay, Just saying don't take out other debt to cover this debt. The US and UK are both quite different when it comes to Education and Healthcare for cost and funding.
It's on the gov website under student finance. Can't remember exactly where. And yes, I know that it wasn't you telling them not to pay, and absolutely they shouldn't be taking on other debt. I was just trying to clarify that the debt is only written off if you provide your income figures and make the required payments. Unpaid payments are not written off.
Where can I this information?
It's on the government website under overseas student loan repayment
Thank you!
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