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Should You Pay Back Your Student Loan Early in UK?

Although there are different types of student loans in the UK depending on when you graduated, the short answer is no. In the UK, the Student Loans Company only collects repayments once you earn over a certain threshold. Even then, they only deduct 9% of whatever you earn above the threshold. If you are unfortunate enough not to earn enough to pay back the loan in about 30 years (that’s 83% of us), then we simply don’t have to pay it back anymore.

Knowing this, student loan debt doesn’t really behave like real debt. It’s more like a graduate tax or contribution you make for the funding you got towards your studies at university.

But, you might argue that there’s interest on your amount owing, and you don’t want to pay interest if you don’t have to. The good news is that the interest rate is so low compared to conventional debt interest that you’d be better off investing or saving the money and getting higher returns. It’s also important to prioritize contributing to an emergency fund in case you lose your job for instance, instead of paying back the student loan. If you voluntarily pay back the student loan in full and then realize you needed the money for something else, you won’t be able to get that money back and you may be forced to go into real debt if you borrow money conventionally.

Don’t Wish It Were Easier, Wish You Were Better

We all wish life was a bit easier – that we had more time to relax, less stress, and an escape from the duties and responsibilities we have. But we know deep down that escaping our responsibilities doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, achieving hard things gives purpose, fulfilment and happiness. Athletes chase the thrill of hitting personal bests and winning Olympic gold, entrepreneurs want to contribute to make society better, couples want to have great relationships and raise a family. All these goals are difficult to achieve, but we appreciate life so much more when we do difficult things.

So instead of avoiding responsibility, seek it out. Find a goal that you’re not sure is possible for you. Doing hard things hardens you. It gives you more encouragement to realize that your potential is a little bit higher than you thought it was before. It’s the key to self-esteem and purposeful living.

Most of Our Suffering Comes From Avoidance

If you’re ever in a state of uneasiness or discontent, it probably stems from the fact that you’re avoiding something. Maybe you’re avoiding having a difficult conversation with someone you love, or simply avoiding the tasks you need to do for work or school. Or it could be that you’re avoiding thinking about major life decisions and are just floating through a sort of limbo. Or you may be avoiding to complete events of the past, and unwilling to accept whatever happened. Avoidance of our suffering compounds our suffering.

To overcome the suffering we need to live with courage. Tell people the things you need to tell them. Stay on top of the important tasks – apply for jobs as quickly as you can, finish your reports way before the deadline, rehearse your presentations well in advance. Doing the hard things first gives you encouragement that you can attack anything that comes your way, and overcome any stumbling blocks that inevitably appear.

If you want to banish that familiar sinking feeling, you already know what you need to do – stop avoiding it.

How to Increase Job Security and How Much You Get Paid

If you feel underpaid at work, the reason is simple – you’re replaceable. You’re dispensable. There are some types of jobs where you know if you left today, there would be a replacement for you ready and waiting and happy to pick up the slack that you’ve left.

You feel like you’re wasting your time – getting paid too little for a job that you know that most relatively able people can do, or at least get taught to do without too much time and effort.

So what can you do about it? One option is to try and find a more specialized job that involves skills that are more valuable and less common. But what if you have no unique or valuable skills? Then it’s time to start learning, either in your own time or by securing a new job with pure enthusiasm, humility and a hunger to learn.

The other option is to stay in your industry, but to find ways of adding value to your company that you know no-one else can do. This can be by building relationships with people outside your organization, so that you become the channel through which correspondence is made. This can be through learning the ins and outs of the industry, and keeping up with current trends where other members of your company may have dropped the ball. You could offer to take responsibility of big projects, so much so that if you left, the project would be almost impossible to see through. Find specific skills within the scope of your role that you can do better than not only everybody else in the company, but everybody else you know.

Either way, the key to job security and getting paid well is not only your value to the company but your indispensability. Become indispensable to the point where you know it would take weeks or months of headhunting to be able to find someone that could even come close to replacing what you were able to do for your organization’s success.

Premeditation of Evils: The Stoic’s Way of Expecting the Unexpected

The Stoic school of philosophy contains the phrase Premeditatio Malorum, literally translating to premeditation of evils. What this means is that the Stoics took time to imagine things that could go wrong in life and things taken away from us. They wanted to be as prepared as possible for things that could be unexpected so that they could behave with virtue when the time came.

In the modern day this still applies. Do you know what you would do if you suddenly lost your job? Or if your partner wanted to break up? Or if one of your loved ones received a terminal diagnosis? What if you became permanently disabled, or lost your speech, sight or hearing? What if you got sued for all of your money?

As painful as those scenarios are to imagine, the Stoics viewed this exercise as important. They believed that unlucky events fell heaviest on those who least expected them, those who were least prepared. In understanding the possibility for ill fortune, they experienced more gratitude for times of good fortune but also a readiness in the event that things changed.

The premeditation of evils can extend a little further too, for events that aren’t considered disastrous but could still be unexpected. If you are in a relationship, do you know what you would do if an attractive work colleague started seducing you? Do you know what you would do if you or your partner became pregnant? If you are single, do you know what you would do if the subject of your admiration started showing real interest? Do you know what you would do if the amount in your bank account suddenly contained a few extra zeroes in error? Do you know what you’d do if your best friend asked you to be their alibi in a criminal case?

Imagining these kind of scenarios gives us a chance to respond to these situations in line with our values, instead of being panicked or feeling reactive if and when these relatively unexpected, yet impactful events occur.

How Wider Society Can Learn From the Failed European Super League Plans

This week, the world learned that the greedy owners of the world’s biggest football clubs banded together to propose a non-competitive, self-serving, breakaway league called the European Super League.

Instantly, the media were outraged, the fans were outraged, the governing bodies of the sport were outraged, politicians were outraged, Royal family members were outraged. Later, football managers and players, including those of the clubs that had banded together, spoke out about their opposition to this new competition. Two days after the announcement, fans took to the streets to protest in front of the stadiums, delaying the team buses from arriving to start their game.

Shortly after, the greedy owners began to fold under the pressure of the opposition, and their plans have been all but scrapped. The figures involved in these devious plans have shown their hand and are now being driven away from the very clubs that they own.

So what can we take away from this?

Firstly, that a lot of rich people are self-serving and greedy. We live in a world where the biggest companies pay next to no tax to countries that they operate in. They feel invincible because they know that the public will be in uproar if they can’t log into Facebook or if they couldn’t buy the newest iPhone because of these companies’ tax avoidance. We all need to be aware of this, and we need to recognize when these companies are no longer helping the societies they claim to serve.

The second takeaway is how quickly change can occur when multiple parties unite with a common cause. The collective love of football and their biggest institutions (and conversely the hate of their owners) meant that the European Super League plans were scrapped just two days after being announced. Meanwhile in the wider world, there is huge wealth inequality, poverty, multiple kinds of discrimination, refugee crises, and many other issues in our societies. What would happen if we could unite as passionately against some of these issues too? Would it be as simple as this to create rapid change?

The real downfall of the European Super League is how drastic the proposed changes were. Human beings are all naturally resistant to change, and find comfort in the way things already are. In contrast, things like the increasing wealth gap slowly creep up on us, so the effects don’t feel quite as abrupt. This could be another reason why these societal issues are such difficult problems to tackle.

Overall, we can take solace in the fact that ordinary people can force the oligarchs of this world to change their decisions, but we need the help of the other parties too. That is, members of the media, royalty, politicians, charities, unions, and governing bodies.

The World Owes You Nothing

The problem when we get something, is that we tend to assume that the world now owes it to us. This can apply to houses, cars, jobs, friends, partners, status and wealth. When we achieve or acquire these things, we start to get comfortable and start to take them for granted. We feel we deserve these things.

But in reality, the world owes you nothing.

Firstly, complacency can take away your job and relationships, because you stopped providing the same value as you did at the beginning. Or, causes outside your control can occur – your car could get stolen, a natural disaster could destroy your home, deaths of loved ones, someone tries to shatter your reputation, market forces turn your investments sour.

Understand that all the beautiful things you may have right at this moment will not be here forever. Do what you can to make important people feel loved. But also recognize that we can decide to loosen our attachment to things, so that if they desert us we can be grateful that we were lucky enough to have them in the first place.

Working Hard Isn’t As Important As Knowing What to Work On

Most of us have been taught the importance of hard work – through our teachers, parents, mentors, and bosses. Hard work of course can lead to success and achievement.

But if you’re going to work hard, you have to know that you’re working on the right thing.

After all, is it really success if you have achieved something you weren’t interested in to begin with?

If you want to get rich you have to know what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. Working hard matters, but hard work alone isn’t going to get you anywhere. You could work hard at being a laborer or as a cleaner but you’re not going to get rich.

On the other hand, you may find some people working in certain industries or in certain roles who are very rich, but don’t work hard. They tend to get paid for their judgement and decision-making rather than their physical output.

Before you get your head down and start working without thinking about it, think long-term. Am I doing the right job in the right industry? Not just to get rich, but does it interest me? Does it fulfill me? Do I like who I work with? Can I see myself here in the long-term?

The Three Biggest Decisions of Your Life

Entrepreneur and angel investor Naval Ravikant advises that young people should be spending more time making the big decisions: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.

These three things will pretty much determine the quality and trajectory of our lives. Sometimes we find ourselves going with the flow, entering relationships that we aren’t 100% sure of, spending a lot of time doing a job but spending so little time deciding which job would be best for us. And usually the place we decide to live in will determine who we meet and which jobs are mostly available too.

Once we decide these three things we can be much more intentional with our lives instead of being taken whichever way the wind is blowing.

Variety is the Spice of Life: Why Time Seems to Be Passing By Quicker As We Age

According to Chip & Dan Heath in their book The Power of Moments, most people think that time passes quicker once we get past the age of 30. If this is true, why? The Heaths claim that it’s because the ages of 15-30 contain a lot of life milestones – we finish school, learn to drive a car, study for a degree, get our first job, enter our first romantic relationship, travel the world, get married, have children etc. After the age of 30, there are far fewer big milestones, and that can make it seem like time is flying by.

So how can we try to counteract this? The Heaths suggest that we should add a little variety by creating defining moments in our lives – memories that can can create by doing something novel. This could be a combination of moments of elevation, insight, pride, or connection. A moment of elevation is one that rises above the everyday; a moment of insight rewires our understanding of ourselves or the world; a moment of pride will capture us at our best; and a moment of connection is social.

As much as routines are designed to increase productivity, it allows time to fly by unnoticed. Adding the extra spice to life through variety will allow us to remember more prominent moments through our lives. So what kind of things can you do to add variety? Going to your favorite travel destination can provide a moment of elevation; doing a 10-day meditation course may provide you with moments of insight; entering an obstacle course race with a team of friends can create pride and connection.

If you think about it, life is made up of moments. So create photo-worthy moments, try new things, and lean into uncertainty. As the authors of the book Surprise put it, “We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.”