HECS Payback

I see how I didn't communicate what I mean.

If a person wants to commence paying back their debt, and it is possible in their circumstances, they may pay more than the minimal required amount. Just like some of us repay more than the minimal required monthly payments on our credit cards. The law does not force anyone to wait until they reach a certain level of income before they can begin to pay it back.

I perfectly understand that not everyone who has a HECS debt can afford to repay it immediately. However there are also consumers who have accrued this debt, do earn a reasonable income, but still refuse to pay it back because they have some entitlement mentality.

I must live in a bubble. I paid my mature-age units up front, because my husband and I believed it was the right thing to do at the time. No one held a gun at my head and said that I had to do any tertiary studies. We chose to do so and actually believe that we are responsible to pay the price charged.

 

Get a job with more hours than they were previously working since they aren't studying any longer. I know, it is a strange concept.

 

Wash your mouth out!!!

I remember when we owned our business, we had our doors opened 84 hours per week (12 hours/week, 7 days/week) - just so we could get ahead. On top of that, there was prep time, cleanup time, bookwork time, ...

Thanks for bringing a smile to my face.

 

Yeah running your own business is totally the same as working for a casualised minimum wage job where you don't even know if you'll be working the next week or not

 

I believe @Angel was referring to graduates.

 

They've got an educmucation, now get out into that coal mine and pay your debt to society.

 

Exacly! Mind you, that labouring job you had at uni probably paid better than your job as a law graduate

 

So was I

I remember a SIL was talking about how tired she was from working double shifts.

I told her I had empathy with her as I had worked many double shifts.

Then I found out she was talking about double 4-hour shift.

WTF!! I was talking talking about double 8-hour shift .

 

Why would you go to Uni and then only earn a below average age. I think the issue is one of self worth more than anything else.

 

Most uni graduates won't go out and start their own business.

What was your degree before going into pizza?

 

It depends on the degree. There's not many jobs around for someone with a double degree in ancient history and dead languages. Mind you, in the early 2000's I went back to uni because I couldn't get a job with an IT degree, so...

 

I was more talking about working 84+ hour weeks.

IT, although back in 1976, it was termed Computer Science.

I had this theory that people would always need computers and food.

I feel the theory held true.

 

They could make voluntary repayments, but in reality they'd be better off investing those funds elsewhere instead of paying off their HECS. The voluntary repayment bonus (5%) has been abolished, and the indexation increase on HECS was a laughable 1.5% for 2016. So the choice is basically:

- repay HECS which is increasing at somewhere around 1.5-2.5% per year currently
OR
- put that money in just about any investment and get a superior return - and that's assuming you have NO other debts that would be incurring interest at a much higher rate!

If they want people to repay HECS earlier, they need to provide a real financial incentive for them to prioritise it. Otherwise they're financially handicapping themselves by making voluntary repayments.

Better yet, do what the government is currently doing and make repayments start at a lower threshold, but not trigger such a ridiculously large payment when you go over the threshold.

For example, in the 2016 year, if you got a $1 payrise from $54,868 to $54,869 you immediately triggered a massive repayment of $2,194.76, meaning you actually lost $2,193.76 by getting a 'payrise'. An extreme example at the far end of the spectrum, but I've seen plenty of graduates get caught by this to varying degrees.

 

Do people still use computers?

 

Yes. A smartphone is a computer. Actually, any modern smartphone is orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers I learned to program on and a lot more memory and storage too. I cant remember the specs of my first computer but it was something like a 286 XT (6MHz), EGA, with 256k of RAM and a 20 mb hard drive. With software it was $3,500.

In contrast, my $400 smartphone has a Full HD Super AMOLED (1920 x 1080) display, 1.9GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and a 32GB SD card.

In English, the smartphone is like a supercomputer and in comparison my first computer is like a pocket calculator.

 

The dark ages, what were you using? Wasn't that before the Sinclair ZX 81 or Commodore Vic 20 and Apple 2C?

Basic 2.0 or punching holes in cards?

 

The govenment is owed something like $11B in HECS debt.
About time the users paid their bills that we have funded for them already.

 

I recall using a CBM (Commodore Business Machines) portable computer (weighed about 20kg) pre-Vic 20/Commodore 64.

Kenso Kindy had a VAX supercomputer, a beast of a machine which used punch cards, the TRS80 had twin 8" drives.

Our Olympia calculator had really cool orange glowing wires for numbers. It was so advanced that it could add, subtract, multiply and divide.

 

The first computer I bought was a Tandy TRS80 Model 1. I can't remember how much memory it had (probably 4K) - I do remember my first Basic was too large for it. It was a loan calculation program which had four variables:- loan amount, interest rate, term and monthly P&I repayment. Enter any three and it would calculate the fourth.

Its only external storage was a cassette tape.

It was a Digital DEC System 10 mainframe. We wrote programs in Fortran, COBOL, Algol, BCPL, ...

In first year (1974), we used teletypes, paper tape and mark sense cards. In second year (1975), we used punch cards. In third year (1976), we used VDUs (computer screens).

 

Geez, you must be old. Did you play soccer with Noah?