I'd not realised there were so many of us.
Quote:"One Auckland financial mentor said people who had been on low incomes through their lives were sometimes shocked to discover their superannuation was being docked to repay a student loan.
“They wouldn’t be repaying it on a benefit ... I don’t think people realise when they go on to a pension they have to start repaying their student loan from a pension.
“When I’ve said, ‘look, they just don’t have any money’ you get told, ‘they have to pay it back sometime’. I think lots of people who haven’t earnt a lot of money after studying will be quite surprised about that.”
She said half to three-quarters of the pensioners she dealt with had a student loan.
Fincap senior policy adviser Jake Lilley said there should be a mechanism for people collecting debt to look at the wider picture of what was being achieved.
“To take a step back and say, ‘hang on a minute what are we trying to achieve here overall?’ We want this person to be able to live a comfortable life and not having flow-on problems from poverty that arises when you can’t afford things and you end up with a bad outcome that has a cost attachment with that, [like] hospitalisation ... if Studylink debt leads to someone not turning on the heater if they need it.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tens-of-th...QGPCOYAJU/
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)