Louise spent four years at Salford University studying modern languages. During the four years of her course she received Student Loans Co loans of £3000 per year (£12,000 in total). She had a student bank account with an overdraft facility of £1500 and a credit card with a £2000 limit.

By the end of her course, these facilities had been fully used. Louise did not feel that these debts were a problem. She was confident of getting a job on graduating and felt that she would easily be able to cover the repayments.

On Graduating Louise lived with her parents in Telford for two months. She then secured a job based in London on a starting salary of £19,000 pa. In order to help pay for the deposit for her accommodation and to get her through initial expenses (new clothes for work etc) she decided to take a graduate loan. She borrowed £6000 which paid off her student overdraft and credit card balances, and left her with the money to fund her move.

Louise calculated that she would be taking home c£1250 per month after tax when she started working. She was confident that she would be able to pay for her living expenses and her loan repayments which were c£90/mth. She also knew that she would be repaying c£50 from her wages towards her student loan.

Louise did not really know many people in London and so she started socialising with her work colleagues. This was more expensive than she expected and she started paying for nights out with her credit card. A group of new starters at work were planning a holiday in the Autumn and so Louise decided to go along. She spent c£1000 on this holiday including the flight, accommodation and spending money, which she funded with her credit card.

After a year things were going well at work and Louise received a pay rise. She was now earning £22,000 pa. However, she found that her credit card debt had crept up to c£3000. She had also gone back into her overdraft and had a storecard with a £900 balance. These payments in addition to her graduate loan were adding up to nearly £300/mth. She did not ever seem to be able to get out of her overdraft. She therefore decided to go and speak to her bank. The bank were helpful and suggested that she take a loan of £12,000. This would consolidate her original graduate loan, credit card, store card and overdraft and leave her with c£1500 which she needed for a summer holiday which was planned. She therefore took the loan.

Over the course of the next couple of years, Louise did not change her spending pattern. Even though she had consolidated, her overdraft and credit card balances always seemed to creep up again. Approximately three and a half years after moving to London, her debts started to get on top of her. She found that when her salary was paid into her account, it really only just cleared her overdraft. She had also started taking cash from her credit cards to supplement her income. She went to the bank again to enquire about an even larger consolidation loan but this time they were unable to help..

Louise was becoming stressed about her debts and this was effecting her performance at work. She found out about an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) from an article in a magazine. This lead her to get advice about her debt. She realised that she owed nearly £30,000 including her original Student Loans Co debt, her bank loan (with interest) and her cards and overdraft. It was explained that in her position, the best solution would be to consider either Bankruptcy or IVA. As the Bankruptcy solution could not include her Student Loans Co debt, she did not feel that this was a sensible way forward. She therefore decided that IVA would be the best thing for her. This involved paying £350/mth for a fixed period of 5 years (a total of £21,000) which was affordable without having to continually borrow money. After this, Louise would be debt free. She has now paid 3 years of her IVA and is looking forward to a future free of debts.