Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

I’m a little worried about debt. Because I’m starting a post-graduate course on the first of February, and whilst I am very excited about it, the finance part of it does worry me.

The fees are like all college or university fees: horrendously expensive. So expensive that the only way I can really afford it is to take out a career development loan. Thankfully this, as far as loans go, is quite nice: you pay no interest over your course, and you don’t even start paying it back until it’s finished.

It is different to a student loan, though, because it feels like a very real debt. The student loan goes away if you haven’t paid it off by a certain time. You don’t need to start paying it until you’re earning a certain amount of money. But this, this is a real loan, with real money that will need to start being paid back pretty quickly.

I’ve tried looking for debt advice. There are websites out there that can usually help with this sort of thing. Or, at the very least, give you information on it. Tell you your choices. There are websites like This is Money, which specialise in giving you the latest up to date news on all things finance, as well.

In fact, a quick Google shows all sorts of money advice websites, much like this.

None of them touch on my main worry, though. With my course starting so quickly, what it my loan application falls through? What if I’m left stranded in the middle of a course that I then can’t pay for?

I suppose the only option then would be to look at the other options my bank offers: personal loans, or some of their other loans that you can supposedly apply for in a matter of minutes online. But they worry me even more than the career development one does…

It has taken a while, but now, I think, I’ve come to the decision that I’ll apply for some journalism training. So I now have a choice, and even this is quite a difficult one, because there are a lot of options: it means either doing it via a university, doing it via some other, smaller establishment, or doing it as a distance course, online. All of which cost a fair bit of money. But I’m hoping that the rewards will far outweigh the cost of having to pay for it all. Really, I’d just like a little something to boost my CV up a little bit, if I apply for any sort of job in that field.

At the moment, I think I’m leaning towards the distance learning, mostly because you can do it directly with the NCTJ – and most of the other courses are NCTJ accredited anyway. In my opinion, it just feels a little bit like learning to drive, and either doing it directly with a driving school, or going to university to learn to drive for more money. Either way, I’ll have to look into a variety of loans to help me pay for it.

When our economy is in the state that it’s in, I don’t want to get into too much debt. And although banks offer things like loan calculators, it’s still difficult to work out the perfect amount – which, ideally would be enough to see my by, but not enough to be ridiculous.

I wonder if it will be worth my while investigating possible loan brokers? Perhaps … or perhaps it will just be better to try for something like a career development loan, if I’m able to for something like this. Hopefully I will be, as it’s potential career development that I’m looking to achieve. We’ll see, I guess.