Latest / Merryn Talks Money / The 51% Graduate Tax
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
- 0:17Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Merin Talks Your Money, the personal
- 0:19Speaker 2: finance edition of Merin Talks Money. In these bonus podcasts,
- 0:23Speaker 2: we talk about the best strategies for making the most
- 0:25Speaker 2: of your money. I'm Meri in Sumset Web and with
- 0:28Speaker 2: me today senior reporter and Money Distilled author John step
- 0:31Speaker 2: Back here, John, Hi.
- 0:32Speaker 3: Mel.
- 0:37Speaker 1: Okay, John.
- 0:37Speaker 2: So this week we are tackling a topic that you
- 0:40Speaker 2: and I have talked about a lot over the years,
- 0:42Speaker 2: and everyone else has finally noticed. It is student loans. Now,
- 0:47Speaker 2: there's rising graduate debt levels, there's lots of pressure refer reform.
- 0:51Speaker 2: Might there be some possibility of change in the current system,
- 0:54Speaker 2: and what might.
- 0:55Speaker 1: It look like.
- 0:55Speaker 2: We'll get onto that in a minute, but let's just
- 0:57Speaker 2: talk about what is happening here. I mean, there're a
- 1:01Speaker 2: variety of different kinds of student loans. I can't even
- 1:03Speaker 2: remember how many other five different types of student loan
- 1:05Speaker 2: depending on when you took it out. But the one
- 1:07Speaker 2: that's really causing ructions at the moment is the Plan two,
- 1:12Speaker 2: which I think runs from people who were at university
- 1:15Speaker 2: between twenty twelve and twenty twenty two. Just correct me
- 1:19Speaker 2: when I'm wronger better on detail than I am.
- 1:21Speaker 3: No, No, it's way too over that, okay.
- 1:24Speaker 2: But whatever your plan, you end up paying effectively nine
- 1:28Speaker 2: percentage points extra in tax above the repayment threshold. And
- 1:32Speaker 2: we've talked about that over the years because we think
- 1:34Speaker 2: it's part of the thing that disincentivizes people from working.
- 1:38Speaker 2: We think it's more from taking promotions at least, we
- 1:40Speaker 2: think it's one of the things that makes life so very,
- 1:43Speaker 2: very difficult for the young in the UK because they're
- 1:46Speaker 2: paying a phenomenally high effective rate of tax. You know,
- 1:49Speaker 2: you think you think maybe you've just gone over the
- 1:51Speaker 2: forty percent threshold, but in fact your new tax rate
- 1:54Speaker 2: is fifty one percent by the time you've taken into
- 1:56Speaker 2: a gang student loan and national insurance. And this seems
- 1:59Speaker 2: kind of shocking, particularly as for the majority of people
- 2:03Speaker 2: it's going to be with you not just for five years,
- 2:05Speaker 2: ten years, twenty years, but maybe thirty years, probably thirty years.
- 2:09Speaker 2: And of course on the newest plan, which is a
- 2:12Speaker 2: Plan five, I think it's forty.
- 2:13Speaker 1: Years, not thirty years.
- 2:15Speaker 2: And people are suddenly beginning to notice that this is
- 2:17Speaker 2: a really shocking burden to have to carry for your
- 2:21Speaker 2: entire working life. But I suppose the first question I
- 2:24Speaker 2: want to ask is why do you think people are
- 2:26Speaker 2: noticing now when we've been talking about it for years.
- 2:31Speaker 3: I think it's like a lot of these things, it's
- 2:32Speaker 3: only when they're critical master people have been actually pummeled
- 2:35Speaker 3: by it. I think wine issues because obviously these the
- 2:39Speaker 3: Plan two started in twenty twenty elve, So the canes
- 2:41Speaker 3: of people who graduated and see twenty sixteen going to
- 2:45Speaker 3: be in the kind of like thought, these no starting
- 2:47Speaker 3: families working in can of metal management get into the
- 2:50Speaker 3: bit of their career where they feel that they should
- 2:52Speaker 3: be young and enough to buy a house and start family.
- 2:57Speaker 3: Quite how few of those people are working in the media,
- 3:00Speaker 3: you know, so the good columns in the Times or whatever,
- 3:03Speaker 3: and they're starting to know is the hotel a minute? Like,
- 3:05Speaker 3: I'm a forty percent taxper but yes, I'm paying fifty
- 3:08Speaker 3: one percent on top of that, I'm paying in my
- 3:11Speaker 3: auto enrollment pension and basically there's nothing left for me
- 3:15Speaker 3: at the end of the day. And I thought that
- 3:17Speaker 3: things were going to be easier by now. So I
- 3:18Speaker 3: guess they've just started. And also of course they've getting
- 3:21Speaker 3: a letter you know, from the student Launch Company every year,
- 3:24Speaker 3: and they're kind of looking at and they're thinking, wait
- 3:25Speaker 3: a minute, oh, at least as much as I did
- 3:28Speaker 3: the I graduated in that was a decade ago.
- 3:31Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 3:31Speaker 2: I think that's one of the really interesting things about it,
- 3:33Speaker 2: isn't it is that you know, people keep saying, oh,
- 3:35Speaker 2: don't worry about it.
- 3:36Speaker 1: It's not a big deal. You know, if you don't
- 3:38Speaker 1: have enough money, you know, I'm paid off. It's not
- 3:39Speaker 1: like a real debt. It's not like a real debt.
- 3:42Speaker 1: It's just a graduate contribution.
- 3:43Speaker 2: Is Martin Lewis, and I strongly disagree with most of
- 3:46Speaker 2: what he says about the student lives, but he keeps
- 3:48Speaker 2: referring to it as a graduate contribution, and it really,
- 3:51Speaker 2: you know, it's just it's not that big a deal.
- 3:53Speaker 2: It's not like a real debt. But if you get
- 3:55Speaker 2: a letter every year telling you that you are pounds
- 3:59Speaker 2: fifty thousand pounds sixty seventies eighty pounds and that worse,
- 4:02Speaker 2: even though you've been paying it off for all year,
- 4:04Speaker 2: or you think you have. At the end of the year,
- 4:07Speaker 2: because the interest rate is very high, you may own
- 4:10Speaker 2: more at the end of the year than you did
- 4:11Speaker 2: at the beginning, despite the fact that you felt you
- 4:14Speaker 2: paid some off. Yeah.
- 4:15Speaker 3: And I think the other problem is that, I mean
- 4:17Speaker 3: you've said this before, but there's the psychological building of
- 4:20Speaker 3: having that hanging over you. Yeah, if people were going
- 4:23Speaker 3: to union and the people were complaining about this. Also
- 4:25Speaker 3: people who consider themselves to be high achievers and so
- 4:28Speaker 3: they sort of see this inability to pay this debt
- 4:32Speaker 3: off as some kind of personal failure. But also, I
- 4:34Speaker 3: mean is more than just psychological, it's a huge financial
- 4:41Speaker 3: planning issue. Yeah, Because you know, we talk about retirement.
- 4:44Speaker 3: So the big problem with retirement is that you's fundamentally
- 4:47Speaker 3: full of uncertainties. And the main uncertainty is obviously you
- 4:50Speaker 3: don't know when you're going to die, and you do
- 4:52Speaker 3: not know the partner of your spending between the time
- 4:55Speaker 3: you retire and the time that you cannot pass away.
- 4:59Speaker 3: And student loans a a lot like that. It's like,
- 5:01Speaker 3: if you wanted to know what you should do with
- 5:04Speaker 3: your student loan, you would have to have perfect certainty
- 5:08Speaker 3: about the way that your earnings were going to work.
- 5:10Speaker 3: And not only that, your earnings and your life events.
- 5:14Speaker 3: I mean, like good example is you know what happens
- 5:16Speaker 3: if you have kids. You know, you might be a
- 5:19Speaker 3: high flying can I graduate at kind of twenty nine
- 5:23Speaker 3: thirty doing well? But what if you'd say to take
- 5:26Speaker 3: a career break and then you decide, well, actually, you
- 5:28Speaker 3: know after kind of a year on maternity or paternity
- 5:30Speaker 3: leave that I said, I'm going to be the one
- 5:32Speaker 3: that stays home and looks after the kids. When a
- 5:34Speaker 3: couple of years, that's completely different decisions you should make
- 5:38Speaker 3: on your student loan.
- 5:39Speaker 2: Man, in terms of whether you should take a loan
- 5:41Speaker 2: or not, whether you should try and get your parents
- 5:43Speaker 2: to pay it at front, or how you should do everything.
- 5:45Speaker 3: Yeah, well the exactly kind of the financial SIDEA is
- 5:48Speaker 3: kind of night marriage from that point of view, because
- 5:50Speaker 3: at the end of the day, if you if you
- 5:51Speaker 3: were to just leave your nie and then not get
- 5:54Speaker 3: a job at all, then yes, it would be pointless
- 5:56Speaker 3: to pay by your student loan because we're paying back
- 5:58Speaker 3: sixty thousand pound OIDs and you would never ever, actually
- 6:02Speaker 3: I've had to repay that, John.
- 6:04Speaker 2: I suppose, unless you felt you had a duty to
- 6:06Speaker 2: other taxpayers.
- 6:07Speaker 1: To pay your way.
- 6:09Speaker 3: I feel that we've already demonstrated that is not the case.
- 6:14Speaker 3: You cannot lie on your human beings for that.
- 6:17Speaker 1: No you can't.
- 6:17Speaker 2: I mean, I suppose when when people look at it
- 6:19Speaker 2: and say, well, it's not like a real loan, it's
- 6:21Speaker 2: you know, it's a lump sum that you might never
- 6:23Speaker 2: pay off, and so in the end that maybe a
- 6:25Speaker 2: very large number of people will never pay back where
- 6:27Speaker 2: they borrow.
- 6:27Speaker 1: So watch the problem.
- 6:28Speaker 2: I think that that's a confusion, isn't it, between effectively
- 6:31Speaker 2: stock and flow.
- 6:32Speaker 1: Right, You're still.
- 6:33Speaker 2: Paying nine percentage points extra every year, and that's a
- 6:35Speaker 2: massive burden, regardless of what the big number is, whether
- 6:38Speaker 2: you're paid off or not.
- 6:39Speaker 3: But also, I mean the other thing is the reason
- 6:41Speaker 3: they keep changing it. I think this is that says
- 6:43Speaker 3: actually important is that the government is then increasing the
- 6:47Speaker 3: number of people who do endor promently pay it bus
- 6:50Speaker 3: And I think that's it, because you're really people started
- 6:53Speaker 3: obviously oh well it's not a real loaning and it
- 6:55Speaker 3: doesn't matter that much anyway. But the closer it gets
- 6:58Speaker 3: to being something that will likely not this is just
- 7:00Speaker 3: a summer money that you have to pay off over
- 7:02Speaker 3: your work in lifetime. You know, you can no longer
- 7:05Speaker 3: kind of keep dismissing it like that. I mean a
- 7:08Speaker 3: law Plan two is when people are complaining about Plan five,
- 7:10Speaker 3: actually moves it much further along that way, the interest
- 7:14Speaker 3: rate doesn't look as ugly, but the fact you have
- 7:16Speaker 3: to pay over forty years thirty means that far more
- 7:20Speaker 3: people are going to end up paying the whole thing.
- 7:23Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think people are beginning to notice some
- 7:25Speaker 2: of the unfairnesses here. And one of the things that
- 7:27Speaker 2: you hear people now talking about over and over again
- 7:29Speaker 2: with the Plan two loans and the Plan vied by
- 7:31Speaker 2: the way, is that the interest rate is based on RPI,
- 7:34Speaker 2: not CPI. Now the government uses CPI for almost everything
- 7:38Speaker 2: because they no longer consider RPI to be a reasonable
- 7:41Speaker 2: measure of inflation. But of course when it comes to
- 7:43Speaker 2: money that the government has keen to receive, it's much
- 7:45Speaker 2: better for them to use RPI because it generally comes
- 7:48Speaker 2: in about one percentage point higher than CPI. So if
- 7:51Speaker 2: you say we're all student loans are based the interest
- 7:53Speaker 2: rate is based on RPI, that brings in a lot
- 7:56Speaker 2: more money, but also it's kind of unfair because it's
- 7:59Speaker 2: not used for any anything else. And then if you
- 8:01Speaker 2: look at Plan five EI, the one that most recent
- 8:03Speaker 2: students are on, the interest rate is just RPI.
- 8:06Speaker 1: That's it. You pay back over.
- 8:08Speaker 2: Forty years, right, but Plan two it's your RPI. And
- 8:12Speaker 2: then in a sort of bount of extraordinary progressiveness, because
- 8:16Speaker 2: the UK tax system is one of the most progressive
- 8:18Speaker 2: in the world. I don't think people grasp that very often,
- 8:21Speaker 2: but this is yet another example of why this is
- 8:24Speaker 2: a tax, not alone and not just a tax, but.
- 8:27Speaker 1: A very very progressive tax.
- 8:29Speaker 2: The interest rate you pay goes up as you earn,
- 8:33Speaker 2: more so at the bottom.
- 8:34Speaker 1: Of the threshold.
- 8:35Speaker 2: When you go over that threshold and forum type two loans,
- 8:38Speaker 2: it's just over twenty eight thousand, isn't it twenty eight
- 8:40Speaker 2: than four hundred ish pout At that.
- 8:43Speaker 1: Level you just pay RPI.
- 8:44Speaker 2: By the time you get up to the top, you're
- 8:46Speaker 2: playing RPI plus three percentage points.
- 8:48Speaker 1: So these interest rates are.
- 8:50Speaker 2: Very high and that doesn't seem quite right.
- 8:52Speaker 3: Yeah, And to be clear, the top is just fifty
- 8:54Speaker 3: one tho, so it's the bottom of the forty percent
- 8:57Speaker 3: tax bracket.
- 8:59Speaker 2: And the other on fairness that I think people have
- 9:01Speaker 2: now noticed is this business of the threshold being frozen.
- 9:06Speaker 2: So the moment we just said it's over twenty eight thousand,
- 9:08Speaker 2: the current threshold. It's going to be moved up to
- 9:11Speaker 2: twenty nine thousand, three hundred and eighty five pounds from
- 9:14Speaker 2: April twenty twenty seven, but then frozen for three years.
- 9:18Speaker 2: And this brings us into fiscal drag, which people perfectly
- 9:22Speaker 2: reading me say, is not something that should be used
- 9:24Speaker 2: in this context to let them inflation deal with the problem.
- 9:28Speaker 2: So if you've been listening to government ministers talking about
- 9:32Speaker 2: this recently and Rachel Ruths herself talking about it, one
- 9:34Speaker 2: of the things they say is, oh, well, you know
- 9:36Speaker 2: we're keeping an eye on this. I know we're watching it.
- 9:38Speaker 2: No idea, you know, poor people, et cetera. But but
- 9:41Speaker 2: we've got a lot of stuff to pay for. And
- 9:43Speaker 2: suddenly you look at this and you're like, yeah, that's
- 9:45Speaker 2: a tax. That is a tax. They're shifting the goalposts
- 9:48Speaker 2: all the time in order to increase the revenues from it,
- 9:51Speaker 2: as if it were a tax to you know, have
- 9:54Speaker 2: it help pay for other things, et cetera. So that's
- 9:56Speaker 2: obviously absolutely maddening for people with this dat.
- 10:00Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also worry because as soon as it
- 10:03Speaker 3: gets recognized in that way, then the direction just keeps
- 10:07Speaker 3: moving towards it. Being attacks. It's one thing, you know,
- 10:11Speaker 3: we'd be sitting and we talk about how should you
- 10:12Speaker 3: pay for this? How should you think about paying for this?
- 10:16Speaker 3: And in an ideal world, yeah, you would have you know,
- 10:19Speaker 3: like the resources that appearents would have the resources to
- 10:22Speaker 3: actually just pay for it up front and it wouldn't
- 10:24Speaker 3: be something you had to worry about. But I think
- 10:27Speaker 3: we now have to think about getting a degree as
- 10:31Speaker 3: is it actually value for money in a way that
- 10:34Speaker 3: you didn't have to whenever we went to UNI because
- 10:38Speaker 3: it didn't ultimately cost as much or anything at all
- 10:41Speaker 3: dependent Whereas now we young people don't have that luxury anymore.
- 10:47Speaker 3: You know. It basically is this thing worth paying sixty
- 10:49Speaker 3: grand for? You know? And that's that then moves away
- 10:54Speaker 3: from the university experience of you know, getting away from
- 10:57Speaker 3: your hometown and meeting new people and our rest. Well,
- 11:00Speaker 3: you can do that in other ways aren't going to
- 11:02Speaker 3: cost you that kind of money. So that thing is
- 11:05Speaker 3: something that's to be seriously kind of thought about, as
- 11:07Speaker 3: opposed to all these people you see trotted out on
- 11:09Speaker 3: newsnight and all the rest of it, who went to
- 11:11Speaker 3: UNI in nineteen seventy five or whatever, when somebody paid
- 11:15Speaker 3: them to do it, and they can waft on about
- 11:17Speaker 3: how oh yeah, it's all about you know, can I
- 11:19Speaker 3: the enlightenment and learning and education for the sake of it?
- 11:23Speaker 3: You can't. That's no longer a luxury that we've got.
- 11:26Speaker 2: No, And it's interesting that when you were talking about
- 11:30Speaker 2: it just now, you said, is it worth sixty four grand,
- 11:32Speaker 2: sixty five grand, seventy grand? And I would say the
- 11:34Speaker 2: other way around, I'd say, is it worth nine percentage
- 11:37Speaker 2: points of extra tax for your entire working life?
- 11:40Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean that too. I mean I think the
- 11:41Speaker 3: only benefit to say in sixty grand is because it
- 11:44Speaker 3: actually puts a figure on it up front, becaus I
- 11:47Speaker 3: think a lot of people, until you're actually paying that
- 11:50Speaker 3: nine percent, you're not aware of just how brutal that
- 11:54Speaker 3: is in terms of extra tax.
- 12:06Speaker 1: So, okay, onto the real questions. Now.
- 12:08Speaker 2: We've done a podcast before you and I on whether,
- 12:10Speaker 2: if you can afford it, you should pay for your
- 12:14Speaker 2: kid's education upfront, and I think you know, we came
- 12:17Speaker 2: down on the side of, well, all right, it depends
- 12:20Speaker 2: if you have plenty of money and you want to
- 12:22Speaker 2: re leave your child of that psychological burden. Absolutely, if
- 12:25Speaker 2: you have a limited amount of money, are you better
- 12:27Speaker 2: off putting it into a house deposit for them later,
- 12:31Speaker 2: or putting it into a pension for them or into
- 12:33Speaker 2: an ISA for them, etc.
- 12:35Speaker 1: So choices, choices, choices.
- 12:37Speaker 2: And we can't really have a clear view for any individual,
- 12:41Speaker 2: can we?
- 12:42Speaker 3: Unfortunately not? I mean again, I think this is kind
- 12:44Speaker 3: of the problem with it being being more lake attacks
- 12:48Speaker 3: than a day, because it's always going to be fating
- 12:53Speaker 3: as a priority with all the other things that you
- 12:55Speaker 3: need to pay for, and so many of those things
- 12:58Speaker 3: are higher priority of like buying the host. You know,
- 13:00Speaker 3: if you could got a choice doing pay an extra
- 13:02Speaker 3: to your student there or saving not for the hosing deposit,
- 13:05Speaker 3: that really isn't any coin test there, because what where's
- 13:08Speaker 3: the money for the house? Can they come from? If
- 13:10Speaker 3: you've whacked any of the student loan? Obviously emergency find
- 13:14Speaker 3: needs to be a built up before even considered any
- 13:15Speaker 3: of this.
- 13:16Speaker 2: And then pension, well, hundred percent mortgage you one hundredercent
- 13:19Speaker 2: mortgage and you've got a higher cash flow, makes it
- 13:21Speaker 2: easier to get a mortgage.
- 13:23Speaker 3: I mean that's true. You could, yeah, if you want to,
- 13:28Speaker 3: you could assume that you can get wine, but then you
- 13:31Speaker 3: play get two expensive forms of a day coming out
- 13:34Speaker 3: of something your finances if your mind.
- 13:36Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So how do we solve this problem?
- 13:37Speaker 2: Now? Coming back has been out saying let's get this
- 13:40Speaker 2: interest right down, cut it down, and.
- 13:43Speaker 1: That will help.
- 13:44Speaker 2: But of course it only helps to a certain degree,
- 13:46Speaker 2: because even if you're playing a significantly lower rate of interest,
- 13:48Speaker 2: you might still end up paying the ninet percentage points
- 13:51Speaker 2: for the rest of your career. So the other side
- 13:53Speaker 2: of this Martin Lewis argument is that the threshold should
- 13:57Speaker 2: be higher, significantly higher, and that would make the difference.
- 14:01Speaker 2: My own view is that they're both wrong, because that's
- 14:03Speaker 2: a good way to go with this kind of thing.
- 14:04Speaker 1: And then in fact, the best thing to do would
- 14:06Speaker 1: be to you know, maybe.
- 14:08Speaker 2: I don't really know about the threshold. Thousand pounds, ye,
- 14:10Speaker 2: thousan pounds. There is not going to make much difference
- 14:12Speaker 2: people over a career, but it would make sense for
- 14:14Speaker 2: there to be really no interest rate on it at all.
- 14:16Speaker 2: Just pay it back in nominal terms and be done
- 14:18Speaker 2: with it.
- 14:19Speaker 1: Then we're subsidizing.
- 14:22Speaker 2: Education to a degree, to a degree, but they're still repayment.
- 14:28Speaker 1: That would work.
- 14:29Speaker 2: And the other possibility and you know, I would really
- 14:31Speaker 2: go great guns with this one. This would be my
- 14:33Speaker 2: absolute topic. Absolute topic would be to work a little
- 14:39Speaker 2: harder to create an economy that creates an awful lot
- 14:42Speaker 2: of high income jobs so that paying this debt off
- 14:46Speaker 2: isn't such an extraordinary burden. A world where people don't
- 14:49Speaker 2: aspire to earning forty two thousand pounds but are pretty
- 14:52Speaker 2: sure that if they'd really do well, they'll be earning
- 14:54Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy that's the actual answer, right.
- 14:58Speaker 3: Yeah. There's a journalist of and the Ft joined Burden
- 15:01Speaker 3: mud Duck who did a really good piece on Yes,
- 15:03Speaker 3: and they basically pointed out that the UK is the
- 15:06Speaker 3: only place where the graduate premium has gone down, even
- 15:09Speaker 3: the low student participation has gone up in loads of
- 15:12Speaker 3: different countries. So it's not just as I know. To
- 15:16Speaker 3: be fair, I fell into this a bit. I thought,
- 15:19Speaker 3: it's because we get so many graduates now that the
- 15:21Speaker 3: graduate premium has gone down, but just as an echo
- 15:24Speaker 3: that helps, we are including places like you know, the
- 15:26Speaker 3: US and Australia. And his point is basically it's just
- 15:29Speaker 3: because they've produced the decent, high paying jobs that had
- 15:33Speaker 3: enough graduate jobs to go around.
- 15:36Speaker 2: Growth low growth and live productivity. And that's why people
- 15:39Speaker 2: care about these loans so much. That's why they're such
- 15:42Speaker 2: a purdon is because we can't create the high income
- 15:46Speaker 2: jobs to pay them off easily, to make them in nothing.
- 15:48Speaker 2: Maybe will be able to brush them off and say, well,
- 15:50Speaker 2: that'll be gone by the time I'm thirty four.
- 15:51Speaker 1: I'm all good.
- 15:52Speaker 3: It's so so interesting because employers are always complaining about
- 15:55Speaker 3: how we don't have a skilled enough workforce, and that's
- 15:57Speaker 3: why we need to import lots of people. But as
- 16:00Speaker 3: tons of we see me have an ordnly qualified workforce,
- 16:03Speaker 3: but who employers can pervade the jobs. So that's a
- 16:08Speaker 3: sort of interesting Say they're shoe, they are. But perhaps
- 16:11Speaker 3: when we can tackle another do yeah.
- 16:14Speaker 2: Anyway, So I suppose what we come down to here
- 16:16Speaker 2: is will there be reformed? Very probably? I would expect
- 16:18Speaker 2: somebody to do something quite soon. There are well over
- 16:21Speaker 2: five million people on that type two of student loan,
- 16:25Speaker 2: and so that's that's quite a big voting block right there.
- 16:27Speaker 2: So someone will want to do something for them. But
- 16:29Speaker 2: I strongly suspect that whether we talk about putting the
- 16:31Speaker 2: threshold up by a couple of grand or reducing the
- 16:34Speaker 2: interest rate a little bit, or making the interest rate
- 16:36Speaker 2: maybe even less progressive, so everyone pays the same rate
- 16:39Speaker 2: regardless of income whatever something like that. But in the main,
- 16:43Speaker 2: that's not going to make the difference. What's really going
- 16:46Speaker 2: to make the difference is not having less to pay back,
- 16:49Speaker 2: but earning more. So it doesn't feel such a burden.
- 16:52Speaker 2: And I don't see and maybe you have a different view,
- 16:54Speaker 2: but I don't see that coming down the tracks anytime soon.
- 16:57Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's just added too Bretons can a long
- 17:00Speaker 3: list of huntly unsolvable problems that could always sort of
- 17:04Speaker 3: if we just did slightly cheaper energy.
- 17:10Speaker 2: That would be that would go quite a long way, John,
- 17:11Speaker 2: quite a long way, right.
- 17:15Speaker 1: We don't want to get into a different conversation.
- 17:17Speaker 2: And I am sorry, students, I don't feel that we
- 17:19Speaker 2: have offered you a lot of hope here.
- 17:22Speaker 3: If you are about to go to unique look things
- 17:25Speaker 3: like apprenticeships as well or instead you would like just
- 17:29Speaker 3: just think about your options. I'm not saying don't go,
- 17:32Speaker 3: but you may be have to think about it with
- 17:34Speaker 3: a slightly harder head than a lot of people around
- 17:37Speaker 3: you are encouraging you do.
- 17:41Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's Marren Talks Your Money.
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- 17:50Speaker 2: Underschool Stepic. This episode is produced by Sammersadi and Moses
- 17:54Speaker 2: and questions and comments on this show and I think
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- 18:10Speaker 2: MHM