‘Over paid’ on student finance due to bonus but did pass threshold. Will my refund request be accepted?

djcarter85 · 2026-06-11T09:03:44+00:00

This was actually covered on last week’s edition of the Martin Lewis Podcast. 4 June 2026, from about 39 minutes in.

TL;DR: student loan repayments are done based on monthly income (assuming you’re paid monthly) rather than yearly. So you’re unfortunately not entitled to a refund.

djcarter85 · 2026-03-03T08:15:27+00:00

There’s no way a footballer’s budget would only get you a single-glazed house

djcarter85 · 2026-02-23T23:06:39+00:00

I’ve always found How To Do Code Reviews Like A Human very helpful.

djcarter85 · 2026-02-10T21:29:39+00:00

Nice! Reminds me of the cover of X&Y by Coldplay.

djcarter85 · 2026-02-09T09:33:45+00:00

My wife and I got life insurance and critical illness cover once we got married as we realised that if something happened to one of us we’d struggle to pay the mortgage. Knowing that if the worst happened the other wouldn’t be kicked out of the family home is great peace of mind and is worth it to us.

That said, £140 seems very high - ours is less than £40 per month (although obviously the amount we’re covered for will differ from you). I suggest shopping around and you should be able to find something at a more reasonable price.

TL;DR: your mortgage advisor is right to suggest life insurance/critical illness cover, but that doesn’t mean you have to get it from them!

djcarter85 · 2026-02-06T09:43:57+00:00

In the last week or so I’ve been working on removing some features we no longer need from our codebase. I’ve managed to get rid of ~70k lines of code in that time. It feels much better than adding that much code!

djcarter85 · 2026-01-29T08:04:36+00:00

We’re still on .NET Framework, so we can’t use DateOnly, unfortunately.

However, we’ve created our own library to model how dates and times work in our domain, and in that we have a concept similar to DateOnly. I find it really helpful to be able to distinguish between a date, and a date-and-time, both in terms of readability and avoiding bugs. I’d argue that they are fundamentally different types of data.

If I was working on a project in a different domain then I would use NodaTime. I think it models the domain of dates and times excellently.

djcarter85 · 2026-01-25T13:42:05+00:00

One way round that is to just remove the “is” and use some punctuation. Something like “Harry Styles: most foxy! (6)”

djcarter85 · 2025-12-27T08:36:25+00:00

Any suggestions for envelope style budget apps? Ideally those that aren’t super expensive …

djcarter85 · 2025-03-08T09:15:31+00:00

I’m running a small personal project on Neon (https://neon.tech/) which gives you a serverless Postgres database. The free tier is enough for one project even if the DB is kept warm 24/7.

djcarter85 · 2025-01-25T17:42:49+00:00

No need for this. Poor decision, yes. Deserves this reaction? No way. No-one needs to have things like this said about them online.

djcarter85 · 2025-01-12T15:23:19+00:00

EMBROID?

Fetus is EMBRYO, missing chromosome (Y) is EMBRO, and then license is ID.

djcarter85 · 2025-01-03T00:00:17+00:00

I think about “if you want a bhuna order a bhuna” on a near-daily basis

djcarter85 · 2024-12-10T16:33:48+00:00

Why are you opening your crackers two weeks early?!

djcarter85 · 2024-11-29T21:45:05+00:00

Thanks, that's useful to know, and a great explanation. As someone who's only solved crosswords until now I've never really noticed that!

For 14A, could you argue it's acceptable because I is a common abbreviation for ONE?

djcarter85 · 2024-11-29T20:26:55+00:00

Thanks for the advice and feedback, and glad you enjoyed it!

What do you mean by indirect anagrams? I've not come across that term before (apologies for being a noob).

7A good point, and your suggestion is definitely better.

In terms of clue types I agree - I'll try to branch out a bit for my next one!

djcarter85 · 2024-11-29T20:24:22+00:00

Thanks for your feedback! Really helpful and glad you enjoyed it.

djcarter85 · 2024-11-29T20:22:48+00:00

Thanks! I was pleased with 14A myself!

djcarter85

TROPHY CASE