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Let me explain how that average person would have ended up there.
HELP is an income-contingent loan, which means graduates do not start paying it off until they are earning above a particular threshold.
Once a graduate starts earning more than $51,550, their employer needs to start deducting HELP repayments from their pay alongside income tax. At that wage, the repayment rate is 1 per cent, but it rises to 10 per cent for people earning $151,201 or more.
Now, there is technically no interest on a HELP. But annually on June 1, it is indexed by the rate of inflation (it’s calculated using the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ consumer price index, but is slightly different to the annual inflation rate – you can read more about…
