In 2018, arts worker Sarah began paying off her student loan debt of $31,330. She didn’t think too much about it until this year, when she logged on to her MyGov account to check the balance – and saw it had only gone down to $30,630.59. Despite having paid $5,721 from her salary over the past five years, she has only managed to knock off $799.41.
“It was the first time I realised that despite all this money coming out of my salary, I had barely made a dent,” Sarah, who asked that only her first name be used, says. “It was just a shock there, because I feel like we were very much sold it as a ‘no interest loan’.”
