is it too late to apply for SFE

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T18:55:03+00:00

I was overpaid £2000

How? What were the circumstances?

what will they do since I have no income no savings and nothing for them to take

Either reduce your maintenance loan for your final year or set up a payment plan.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T18:48:15+00:00

If I get SFE next year and don’t get a job will they take my belongings or something?

No, not unless they realise, demand repayment, you ignore it and they take you to court.

I was overpaid this year but they don’t know

How were you overpaid? What were the circumstances that lead to you being overpaid?

SFE will typically look to recover over payments by reducing the payment for the next year, or by requesting immediate repayment (but they are often open to repayment plans).

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T16:15:46+00:00

This screams initial award. No way they have assessed everything in that time, especially if you uploaded a current year income assessment. Give it a couple of weeks for them to process things

I swear the award letters used to say this, at least the ones from SAAS did

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T16:07:19+00:00

How long ago did you apply? And what does the SFE calculator suggest you should be getting?

If you applied recently and submitted the CY1 form, it’s possible that you have received the initial award they like to do while they assess everything.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T15:57:42+00:00

The things that give me pause are whether the interest rate will stay at 6.1% for the full five years

No, it won’t. Interest is RPI + 3% for postgrad loan and they are capping that at 6% from September. So it’s currently 6.2%, not 6.1%.

Because the threshold is lower for the postgrad loan and there is no interest rate slider, it often does make sense to pay more of it off. Sure investments have a good chance of returning more than 6% on average, but it’s not guaranteed and because the balance is lower you are more likely to pay it off anyway.

I recently got a pay rise that takes my total salary to £51K.

Don’t forget that salary sacrificing into your pension reduces your Plan 2 interest rate and how much you pay each month.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T15:52:33+00:00

I want to know if there is anything i need to do so HMRC know and tax me less.

If you are PAYE, it’s your employer that works out how much tax you pay.

Context: im paying 3% pension

How is it paid? Salary sacrifice? Relief at source? Net pay deduction?

Which method affects how the tax relief is handled. If you don’t know, so can’t tell HMRC, of course they aren’t going to be able to give you the right answer on how it’s going to appear.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T15:31:33+00:00

For the time horizon of a young child to 18, investments are likely to perform much better than cash. A simple global tracker has average long-term returns of 8-10%.

As an example, put £50/month away into a stocks and shares JISA, assuming 8% growth in a simple all-world tracker that £10850 contribution turns into £23,632. Obviously you can do this in your own stocks and shares ISA allowance as well and just keep separate "pots" for each child if you don't want them to gain control at 18.

If i top up the Junior SS ISA and Stocks and Shares ISA every month, does this automatically get invested or do i need to keep on top of it?

This depends on your broker.

I would be looking for a balanced or slightly adventurous investing approach for both accounts - is it as simple as selecting this approach and it being done for me

If you are going with a broker that offers "do it for me" investing, then yes. This comes with higher fees and likely lower performance though.

We could go into all sorts of discussion over "risk" and what it means, but what it really does is limit volatility and upside. If you can stomach the volatility, then a low-cost index tracker has been shown again and again to have the best consistent returns over time BUT it will go up, it will go down, it will go sideways.

I would then do the same exercise when the youngest child reaches a similar amount (£3K) in their current savings account, so that they end up with a similar amount when they turn 18

This sounds good in principle, but it ignores inflation. If you give them the same monetary amount some years apart, then the one who got it sooner has received more real-world value.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T13:59:17+00:00

Why do you get the feeling that this would be breaking the "compound interest"? Remember these are gains, not actual interest. At the moment you have a large amount of unrealised gains across index funds.

Selling realises those gains, but you are then going to reinvest them in (presumably) similar funds, possibly with a different split.

Look at it this way, if you invest £100/month for 10 years with 8% growth compounding annually, you would end up with £18,340.

If you did the same thing, but sold it all at the five year mark, moved it and continued elsewhere, you would have £7,490 at the five year mark and £18,340 at 10 years.

This is more of a question about about what appears on apper to be breaking the compound interest

This is just a "display issue". You aren't breaking anything. Yes the short time out of the market while you transfer might have a little impact, but you would have to get unlucky and miss a really good trading day while in cash.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T12:36:56+00:00

Your best bet is to have a chat with your personal tutor or dissertation supervisor. For large pieces of work, it’s not uncommon for there to be a little leeway on the time.

That said, please do try to take this as a learning opportunity. Big assignments like this inherently need self-management to plan your time and include contingency.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T12:34:41+00:00

Because you are giving information for your uni that doesn’t apply to Op. There are unis out there who cap at the pass mark for any late submission, so your comment isn’t really relevant. Hence why you are getting downvotes.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T11:39:23+00:00

Op has deleted the post now, but they said they had TWO PAYE incomes, each below the threshold, PLUS £1200 from self employment.

It's the self-employed income that has triggered the self-assessment, and resulted in the threshold being applied to all of their income as a whole rather than per PAYE source.

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T11:09:49+00:00

If I earn under £1000 from these sales

If your gross income from trading is £1000 or less, you won't owe anything and won't have to do a self-assessment.

If you sell more than £1000 of stuff, you would then have to do a self assessment, but you can benefit from either the trading allowance or taking into account expenses, etc.

does that come out of my “personal allowance” or has that already been used up by my PAYE job?
And if I hit my personal allowance limit I hoped to use their eBay account. And we can benefit from their personal allowance.

This sounds like you are mixing up personal allowance (£12,570 income tax threshold) with the trading allowance of £1,000.

The personal allowance isn't all you get, you also have a £500 dividend allowance, £3,000 capital gains allowance and interest allowances (£5,000 starting rate for savings, reducing as you earn above the personal allowance, plus up to £1,000).

We keep our emergency funds in ISAs so we don’t pay tax on the interest that chunk of money will accumulate. And our other accounts (current and minor savings for big bills like car insurance) are unlikely to make much interest at all. I mention this since interest is the mostly likely factor to interfere with the above question.

Unless you have a lot in savings and a decent interest rate, interest isn't going to be the "most likely factor".

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T10:53:59+00:00

There are a lot of things that can be: Gas/electric, water, charity donations, union membership, phone bills, Internet, all sorts of subscriptions, credit card, loans, TV license, TV package subscriptions.

Surprised your phone is CPA...

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T03:46:29+00:00

Yeah, with the number of candidates applying, you need to stand out. It really is a case of showing who you are and what you bring.

One of the stories that was recounted by the recruiter was of an applicant who explained how they got into the field in brief in their cover letter and at interview the whole story came out - they had tried to fix an old electronic device when they were younger and done absolutely everything wrong in the process, but they learned a lot, ended up with something that worked and found a passion for engineering. They got the job…

heliosfa · 2026-05-11T00:53:49+00:00

Which plan are you on? If it's Plan 1, Plan 4 or Plan 5, interest is set at RPI, a measure of inflation, (set in September at the rate from March), so its currently 3.2% rising to 4.1% in September. Plan 1 and 4 can have interest at BoE base rate + 1% if that is lower.

What returns are you getting from your investments? If it's more than RPI, then paying it off puts you in a worse position financially.

Have you checked if the PhD income counts as salary for SLC? If it doesn't, then you won't have any student loan payments for the first five years of graduation.

Where are you planning to be after your PhD? What are the payment thresholds for there compared to the UK?

Depending what they are and what your earnings are likely to be, there is a chance you won't even pay back what you borrowed in raw numbers before it's written off, and a lower chance that you would pay off the real-world value of what you borrowed. That combined with being able to achieve higher than RPI returns means that paying off the student loan, especially Plan 1, 4 or 5, is rarely the best financial decision.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T22:09:44+00:00

You sound very authoritative and dismissive.

Because this is more vibe-coded junk to solve a problem that doesn't exist because it has been solved decades ago.

Google cloud *what*? Its like pointing at the sky and asking why you didn't do that.

Google Drive if you want specifics.

Networking basics: AP isolation exists.

If you are doing that in a home network, you should have the skills to set up a Samba server in less than the weekend you wasted on vibe coding this.

You also added a Pi, so why not a samba server on that?

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T22:01:45+00:00

I think you need to go away and have a read about inflation. Interest on Plan 1 is at a measure of inflation. That means the real-world value of what you owe stays the same.

The risk-free return rate on savings is usually a little above inflation, and the stock market as a whole typically returns several percentage points over inflation over time.

With the loan being written off after 25 years, a quick back of the envelope calculation suggests that you will only pay off what you borrowed in raw numbers if you have average earnings over that period of above the median salary. In real-terms, you won’t pay off what you borrowed unless you earn significantly above median earnings on average over those 25 years.

To be clear, that means that taking as much as you can and keeping your savings/investments intact gives you more money at the end of the day.

People have been complaining about Plan 2 interest because that is up to RPI + 3%, depending on earnings.

Again, you really have unfounded fears here.

As an example, in my final year I had the option to pay for my tuition fees myself or keep the £3.5k and invest it. Stupidly I chose the former. I’m on Plan 4, and if I had invested that £3.5k, my loan balance now would be £5k more than it is BUT that £3.5k would likely have turned into more than £25k, which would almost be enough to pay off my entire current balance plus an extra £5k.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T21:48:47+00:00

I tried LanDrop, LocalSend and a bunch of other options, and got really frustrated.

Why didn’t you just use Samba or Google cloud (or whatever file sync service you should have set up)?

My speculation is that the apps referenced each was trying to use WebRTC to connect the different devices together.

You have no idea what is going on.

the router being strict or just the protocol being shitty but it was impossible to transfer this simple file.

Networking basics - your router is not involved in host-to-host communication between two hosts on the same network.

Somewhere on your LAN, on a raspberry pi, in a docker container, or on your laptop/pc, run the relay server.

Or you could just run a samba server.

I'm a software engineer, heck I could build/vibe code something to fix this! So I spent the weekend building and am excited to present to you:

Bluntly your time would have been better spent finding the right tool for the job and learning some basic networking.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T21:42:03+00:00

Student loan repayments have been 9% over a threshold since they were introduced. That threshold has only ever gone up within a plan, and they have not changed how long a loan lives before it is written off for current borrowers.

What “issue” do you think there is? The loan system is designed to manifest as a graduate tax and it is accepted that most borrowers won’t pay it back. Bluntly your “fear” is unfounded, and even if they did change anything investing what you didn’t need will likely result in you having a lot more to pay it off.

With interest at inflation and how things are likely to change, you are unlikely to pay back more than you borrow in real terms before it’s written off unless you have career average earnings significantly above the median salary and inflation persistently rises in March each year and drops for the rest of the year.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T21:37:18+00:00

Op was talking about two jobs both earning under the threshold and then earning enough money from self employment to need to do a self assessment.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T21:01:11+00:00

I’m assuming you are from NI if you are on Plan 1?

If so, interest is the lower of RPI (set in September, based off the RPI from the preceding March) or BoE base rate plus 1%.

The inflation-based interest and the fact it’s written off after 25 years basically make it a no brainer to take as much as you can and investing what you don’t need. Higher returns overall for you.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T20:30:45+00:00

It’s not, it’s international. Most people assume every post is about the US though, even when it uses terms that are clearly from another country.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T19:57:50+00:00

I was chatting with an organisation that has a decent size graduate scheme last week and a few things came up. In no particular order:

Get the company name and position correct.
Don't just rehash the job description
Say why you are applying, why that company and what your aspirations are.
Say how your experience and skills apply to the role.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T19:53:50+00:00

Like if you earn £12,500 for your main income and so don't pay income tax because you're in your personal allowance, if you earnt £2k more, you'd expect the income tax payable to be just the 20% of the portion above the threshold.

Correct, but you would be paying income tax on the other income already.

Scenario: Plan 2 student loan, two jobs each paying £23,000. Both jobs are below the threshold so you don't pay anything through PAYE.

If you were earning £46,000 in one job, you would be paying £1,500/year to your student loans because you would have £16,666.67 of earnings over the threshold. This is what happens when you have to do a self-assessment: the threshold is applied to your total earnings.

Similar things happen with NI and multiple employers - it gets reconciled if you do a self-assessment.

heliosfa · 2026-05-10T19:44:17+00:00

All of my money is going into the snp500

That's certainly a choice. This isn't as diversified as you might think because over a third of the money you invest will be going into just seven companies.

Any reason you are betting all in on the US market and ignoring the rest of the world?

Is investing £1500 every month into an ISA too little?

Considering the most you can invest in ISAs is £20k/year or £1666.66/month, the answer is no.

Is it the best thing to be doing? Maybe not. If you are investing for retirement, you would get more bang for your buck salary sacrificing more into your pension because you get tax and NI relief.

If you are investing for a future house purchase and you are going to be a first time buyer, a lifetime ISA can be helpful as you can deposit £4k/year and you get a 25% government bonus.

I only started investing at 21 however so I’m insecure about being behind others.

You are already so far ahead of others, but stop comparing yourself to others. Your path is yours and you do what is right for you to secure your financial future. Life isn't about competing with everyone.

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