Martin Lewis

Thank you for that, Simon, whatever you just said.

And you would probably be better off to stew.

So yes is the answer, but lots of ifs and buts.

But most people, be careful moving your student loan debt to a commercial debt, even if the interest rate is cheaper with the commercial debt.

The student loan does have some preferable terms, such as the fact if you lost your job and you couldn't repay it, you no longer have to repay your student loan because it's based on an income contingent system, i.e.

you only repay it above a threshold.

Hopefully I've danced around all the different issues in there and given you enough to think about.

When you were saying you've got no debt, would you count a mortgage as a debt?

Well, it depends on your mortgage rate.

So if you have a mortgage rate that's at a higher interest rate than your student loan currently is, which is 3.2%,

then you would probably want to consider overpaying the mortgage as a priority to overpaying the student loan debt.

Presuming you could overpay the mortgage without overpayment penalties.

It's a whole other subject there, Simon.

You know, we could do another six minutes on overpaying your mortgage and when it's right, when it's wrong and how to best utilise it.

But hopefully, my suspicion is I've given a relatively sophisticated answer there to Tom because it was a relatively sophisticated question.

I have to be mindful that listening to this podcast is all types of different levels of financial sophistication.

If that's all a bit confusing for you, it's not for you.

I'm just going to add in an extra thought on this, because I know I suspect quite a lot of people are going to listen to the podcast to hear whether they should pay off their student loan with a 0% credit card.

The most important thing here is that equation of whether you are likely to clear your student loan before it wipes.

Now, Plan 1 loans that Tom had, people borrowed less and it has a lower interest rate.