cutting interest rates<\/a> on loans and raising the salary threshold at which repayments start.<\/p>\nSpeaking to The i Paper, Danny said: \u201cI never wanted to go to university, and it was entirely because of the idea of student loan debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough I had the opportunity to go if I wanted to, I didn\u2019t like the idea of having a large amount of debt at such a young age.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompared to friends that I have in university, I am able to be much more financially independent because I have always been earning whilst I learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really think this has helped me with learning how to budget my money, plan and get ahead financially.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d imagine that if I had decided to go university, this would be a very hard skill for me to develop at this stage of my life, as I wouldn\u2019t have had a reliable, steady income.\u201d<\/p>\n
His apprenticeship is in site carpentry, and he is currently on a level 3 course after completing his level 2.<\/p>\n
At the moment, he is still living at home but said he is on track to be moving out at a \u201csuitable age\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cLiving at home and earning whilst I complete my apprenticeship has meant I have been saving more than enough money on my own \u2013 much more than if I had gone to university.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs well as my savings, I have a pension which I have been paying into since I started working with Redrow and plan to carry on paying into it when I finish my apprenticeship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danny said his long-term plans involve owning a house outright and having enough money for an early retirement.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cWorking in the housebuilding industry will help me achieve this as I have no debt to my name, and I have been earning and saving ever since I started working.<\/p>\n
Cutting interest rates<\/p>\n
Plan 2 loans, which apply to England and Welsh undergraduates who started their courses between 1 September 2012 and 31 July 2023 are currently written off after 30 years if they are not paid back.<\/p>\n
These loans are characterised by interest rates of up to 7.3 per cent and a 9 per cent repayment rate in income over \u00a328,470 per year.<\/p>\n
Raising repayment thresholds<\/p>\n
Increasing the salary threshold at which you start repaying your loan by average earnings growth would save graduates earning more than \u00a331,710 about \u00a317 per month from 2029, estimates from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) suggest.<\/p>\n
Lower-to-middle earners would be the biggest gainers from indexing thresholds to income, a policy pushed by the Liberal Democrats as well as many Labour MPs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy current priorities have been focusing on how to use my money efficiently, making sure that I pay into a pension and save money for a deposit on a house.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs most people in trades are paid based on the work that they do rather than having an hourly rate, there is a motivation to do more work to earn more, which I imagine many people at universities may struggle with.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a trade, there is an incentive to work faster as you are working for yourself, and I don\u2019t think not having a university degree will overshadow the skills and work ethic that I have developed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of his friends at university don\u2019t seem too bothered about the debt they have built up, he said.<\/p>\n
But when it has been brought up in conversation, he added that \u201cthey have realised how financially stable I have managed to become due to the apprenticeship and have started to realise how long it will take for them to pay off that debt and how it may set them back.\u201d<\/p>\n
If someone started a course before September 2012, they are likely on Plan 1. If they started in England on or after 1 August 2023, they are likely on Plan 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Financially ahead of his peers, Danny Branson also said doing an apprenticeship has helped him learn how to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245,111274,32808,8600],"class_list":{"0":"post-318059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-student-debt","16":"tag-student-loans","17":"tag-universities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}