Hi
@lilycb26 ,
Deciding about a maintenance loan can be quite tricky, but it sounds like you're considering all the important things.
Have you used the
student finance calculator? This could help show you how much maintenance loan you are actually eligible for, and it is based on your
household's income, so it would include your mum's plus your own. Would you be living at home whilst doing your part time studying?
If you started your previous course before August 2023 you will be on the
previous repayment plan, plan 2. If you decide to study now, it will be plan 5. The interest and repayment between the plans works slightly differently, I'd recommend reading
sfe's repayment guide. It crucially also has information about students who will be on more than one plan. The two plans get
written off after different periods, plan 2 after 30yrs, plan 5 after 40, but I'm not sure how it might work with two different plans.
If you feel you're unlikely to pay the loan back then I'd recommend crunching the numbers just to be sure! Work out how much you could get in the loan, and see if that would significantly impact the amount you would repay or not. By the sounds of it, the tuition loan will be the larger loan to repay and the maintenance might be quite small by comparison, so you could take it to supplement your income. On the other hand, could your income alone be enough to get you through your studies so you might not need the loan?
Hope this information and things to think about helps,
Joshua
UoS Ambassador