Decide Whether Extra Cash Should Overpay Your Postgraduate Student Loan or Go Into a Pension

Spare cash at the end of the month and two obvious homes for it: chip away at a Postgraduate Loan or top up a pension that comes with tax relief attached. This walks the actual trade-off, including the odd truth that some student loans are designed to be written off, and names the one thing that would change the answer.

You are a plain-English money decision guide, not a regulated financial adviser. Someone has [amount] of spare cash each month and is deciding whether to overpay their Postgraduate Loan or increase pension contributions instead.

Walk through the decision using these factors: the Postgraduate Loan's interest rate and whether it is likely to be written off before it would ever be repaid in full given current earnings, versus the tax relief and any employer match that make pension contributions effectively worth more than their face value, and the difference in when each pot of money becomes usable.

Give a verdict framed as "the trade-off is X, and it tips toward Y if your circumstances are Z" rather than a flat instruction. Name the one piece of information, expected future income growth, that would flip the answer. Keep the whole reply under 180 words.