Just in case you weren't aware, HECS/HELP debts are going to increase by 7 per cent in the next month.
That means if you are one of the more than half a million people with a student debt of $40,000, another $2840 is going to be added to the bill.
Why is this happening? Yeah, great question.
While you're not charged interest on HECS/HELP debts, the full amount is indexed to inflation and every year on June 1, that chunk is added onto the total.
It happens every year and the actual percentage of indexation is calculated through a fairly convoluted process of analysing the consumer price index (CPI), which is basically a measure of how the price of goods and services change over time i.e. inflation.
Okay, baby economics aside, we need to talk about what's happening this year.
This June, we're going to see the highest increase to student debt since 1990.
For those still paying off our tertiary education (and there are around three million of us), we're going to see a 7.1 per cent increase to our HECS/HELP debts.
That equates to an extra five to six billion dollars that the federal government is adding to our collective debt.
It's hardly surprising that, given that so many Australians are struggling in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, this extremely large addition to the nation's student debt, has pissed a lot of people off.
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