Get grip on student debt, says someone who knows

By NATASHA HARRIS

If you are one of the hundreds of thousands with a student loan, you probably need a kick in the pants.

A boot, that is, from student loan expert Lisa Schulz, who complains that most people do the wrong thing by ignoring their student loan.

"What most people need is a kick in the pants - because they will avoid paying their loans like they avoid cleaning their toilet," Schulz says.

The 27-year-old TV producer wrote her recently released book, Get Rid of Your Student Loan Now: Your guide to New Zealand student loans (Random House, $19.95) in the hope of providing an independent view for student loan holders like herself.

She owes more than $30,000 accumulated while studying for an unfinished arts degree at Auckland University and two certificates, in pre-press production and fabric design, at Auckland University of Technology.

Reading her book provides one very stern message: start paying off your loan now, or face years of debt.

"Even if people are just paying $10 a week, at least they've fronted up," she says.

"You've admitted you've got a student loan and you're doing something about it.



A total of 314,280 people owe money to the student loan scheme - a little over 13 per cent of the working population.

Schulz shows the average loan to be $13,500, with the average male taking 15 years to pay off a loan. The average female, however, takes 28 years (these figures are based on just repaying the compulsory repayments).

To help relieve the pain of a life of debt, Schulz put a calculator on the website to accompany the book (www.student-loan.co.nz).

The calculator asks people to enter how much they owe on their loan and how often they want to pay it back.

Schulz says the calculator is a great way to make people realise they can combat their loan as well as learning better financial skills.

"Whenever I use the calculator on people, people get all excited and think, 'I can handle this'. When you know what day and what year you're going to pay your loan off, it really gives people an impetus to do it."



While student loans have been available since 1992, Schulz criticises the lack of studies on how student loans affect people.

"Government departments do have statistics on loans but there has been no social impact study and we need to have a look at that. Student loans can be emotionally devastating to people not used to having debt, and I think it's a problem for New Zealand.

"People are having babies later and I think it's a shame that people spend so many of their first 10 working years overseas - I definitely think that's attributed to student loans."

However, do not mistake Schulz as your typical student loan basher, raving on about the greedy Government. She is, instead, a student loan realist.

Schulz does not pretend that student loans are easy to evade.

She lays out the facts clearly - student loans are designed to be the cheapest way to fund tertiary education and evading your loan will get you nowhere.

Commendably, Schulz' book doesn't give any false hope about loans disappearing or magical ways to get rid of yours.



She explains all the technical details in plain English.