Second-year studies reveal the facts of financial life: Card taken away, pounds 260 in bank charges

PIERRE HAGGAR is really enjoying the media studies course at the Polytechnic of Central London.

He took the full student loan at Christmas, and finished his second year pounds 730 overdrawn. 'I didn't pace myself. I'm enjoying myself, so I thought, why not? I'm going to have to calm down.'

He asked his Lloyds Bank manager to extend the pounds 400 agreed overdraft to pounds 500. But when he breached that limit, he started receiving ' pounds 15 letters'.

'In the last five weeks of college I ran up pounds 100 of bank charges - it worked out as pounds 260 for the full year. It might have been better if they had not let me have the money. In the last three weeks they took my plastic card away.

'I was living off friends. It was a complete nightmare. I asked for an extra pounds 30 for the last week, and the bank manager gave it to me. He will let me have the card back when I'm back to pounds 400.'

Pierre is staying with his parents in Leeds during the summer and working on the Vauxhall assembly line near Liverpool - a two-hour drive away. He earns pounds 3.50 an hour and clocks up about 13 hours a day.

'It'll sort itself out, it did last year,' he says. He took out the full student loan in the first and second years, and expects to do so again. 'I'm really looking forward to my third year.'