Student Loans, Help Paying Them Off Please

[Jsteinkruger]

I agree that I hope the people in need would use the program, but I just hope people are not denying themselves the future because they want to keep their income low enough that they do not have to pay anything and would end up with forgiveness. I would love my loans to be forgiven, but I agree the government shouldn't be able to just write the loans off because it is going to cause hell for all the taxpayers.

They do need to make students in high school more aware of college preparation meaning the financial side of college, not to just obtain as many scholarships as possible and fill the rest with loans so they can go to the most prestigious or expensive school possible. Hopefully with everything blowing up about student loans they will start making prep courses that prepare the students for the financial side and hopefully in time will get out of student loans. Problem is, who will pick up the student loans because as far as I know there isn't anyone else out there who will offer such low rates, without a tangible item of value to finance against.

Who knows, right now its spiraling out of control, but maybe they will fix it someday.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I agree that I hope the people in need would use the program, but I just hope people are not denying themselves the future because they want to keep their income low enough that they do not have to pay anything and would end up with forgiveness. I would love my loans to be forgiven, but I agree the government shouldn't be able to just write the loans off because it is going to cause hell for all the taxpayers.

They do need to make students in high school more aware of college preparation meaning the financial side of college, not to just obtain as many scholarships as possible and fill the rest with loans so they can go to the most prestigious or expensive school possible. Hopefully with everything blowing up about student loans they will start making prep courses that prepare the students for the financial side and hopefully in time will get out of student loans. Problem is, who will pick up the student loans because as far as I know there isn't anyone else out there who will offer such low rates, without a tangible item of value to finance against.

Who knows, right now its spiraling out of control, but maybe they will fix it someday.

I don't think you understand the program, you are never kicked off the program. What happens is that your payment gets higher and higher the more income you make an eventually you max at at the standard 10 year rate, in which case your payment will never go higher than this.

You are never kicked out of the program, period.

[dczech09]

I don't think you understand the program, you are never kicked off the program. What happens is that your payment gets higher and higher the more income you make an eventually you max at at the standard 10 year rate, in which case your payment will never go higher than this.

You are never kicked out of the program, period.

That is true. On paper, you are never kicked out of the program. However, it is important to illustrate that you may lose the benefits. So while you may never get kicked off of the program "on paper," the mathematics say otherwise.

As I pointed out earlier, if you fall out of qualification for partial financial hardship and revert to your standard 10-year repayment payment, you would very possibly pay off your loan balance before the 20 to 25 years under IBR are up. Effectively, you would not have student loan forgiveness because your loans would be gone and there would be nothing to be forgiven.

Obviously this is a good thing because the loans are paid off. However, what are the two main reasons people go on to IBR? Lower payment and forgiveness.

If a higher income means a higher payment and the possible loss of forgiveness, then people may (mistakenly) forgo a higher income in order to keep their benefits. So I agree with Jsteinkruger's "I just hope people are not denying themselves the future because they want to keep their income low enough that they do not have to pay anything and would end up with forgiveness."

I definitely agree with the sentiment that we do not want people to pass on IBR when it might benefit them. But I also agree with guiding people to NOT fall for the disincentive factor when it comes to earning more money. Its about striking a balance between using IBR when necessary, and moving on when the time comes.

I strongly believe that it is important to make people aware of IBR, but we also need to educate people of the pros and cons (which is why I have created an online presentation that does both).

[Jsteinkruger]

Yes, i said "kicked out" in one of the posts, apparently that was too overly dramatic for you to hang onto it for so long when my last post had nothing to do with it. I guess you couldn't handle me agreeing with some things you stated.

Please enlighten me on what you do know about the IBR program. Here is my experience with it.

I started repayment in 11/11 joined the IBR program and in 2014 I applied again, but denied access to the program because I was no longer experiencing "partial financial hardship", to me that is kicked out of the program (i agree overly dramatic). Thank god I received a raise in Dec 2014 because that was a tight year for money, even though by their terms I wasn't experiencing "partial financial hardship". However, once i started making the monthly payments I noticed I had more payments to make because all the extra interest was capitalized. So I just looked today and I have approximately 11 years and 4 months.

You keep giving me the impression that you are in the IBR program forever, but how is that so? You have to apply annually to gain access to the program. Are you saying because you are denied access and paying the full amount of the student loans that you are in the final stage of the IBR program?

When you state, who cares about capitalized interest because you can pay more than the minimum, wouldn't it be more beneficial to invest that extra payment in exchange for a return of 7-12% or put that extra payment towards a private loan with a greater interest? I am strictly talking about federal student loans with their low interest rates.

You were thrown so far off trying to correct me and dz because we used terms you didn't approve for a this topic, you decided to try to correct us instead of offering constructive criticism and ideas to help summerdsea. Although I will praise you for the little bit of information about the IRS insolvency that I didn't know.

To be honest, I don't think anyone should use the IBR program unless they absolutely needed to. I should have tried to find a 2nd job, but unfortunately I was gone from 11am to 10pm for my job, so there wasn't much time in the day to get one. Sadly, summerdsea never responded back to my first post asking if they had a budget and what was causing the downfall. Why was she a stay at home mom? was the kid just born? did daycare in the area cost too much that it made more sense for her to stay at home? Maybe she could work nights? We will never know and we won't be able to help her. Oh well, good luck to her hopefully she figures out what will work best for her.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Yes, i said "kicked out" in one of the posts, apparently that was too overly dramatic for you to hang onto it for so long when my last post had nothing to do with it. I guess you couldn't handle me agreeing with some things you stated.

Please enlighten me on what you do know about the IBR program. Here is my experience with it.

I started repayment in 11/11 joined the IBR program and in 2014 I applied again, but denied access to the program because I was no longer experiencing "partial financial hardship", to me that is kicked out of the program (i agree overly dramatic). Thank god I received a raise in Dec 2014 because that was a tight year for money, even though by their terms I wasn't experiencing "partial financial hardship". However, once i started making the monthly payments I noticed I had more payments to make because all the extra interest was capitalized. So I just looked today and I have approximately 11 years and 4 months.

You keep giving me the impression that you are in the IBR program forever, but how is that so? You have to apply annually to gain access to the program. Are you saying because you are denied access and paying the full amount of the student loans that you are in the final stage of the IBR program?

When you state, who cares about capitalized interest because you can pay more than the minimum, wouldn't it be more beneficial to invest that extra payment in exchange for a return of 7-12% or put that extra payment towards a private loan with a greater interest? I am strictly talking about federal student loans with their low interest rates.

You were thrown so far off trying to correct me and dz because we used terms you didn't approve for a this topic, you decided to try to correct us instead of offering constructive criticism and ideas to help summerdsea. Although I will praise you for the little bit of information about the IRS insolvency that I didn't know.

To be honest, I don't think anyone should use the IBR program unless they absolutely needed to. I should have tried to find a 2nd job, but unfortunately I was gone from 11am to 10pm for my job, so there wasn't much time in the day to get one. Sadly, summerdsea never responded back to my first post asking if they had a budget and what was causing the downfall. Why was she a stay at home mom? was the kid just born? did daycare in the area cost too much that it made more sense for her to stay at home? Maybe she could work nights? We will never know and we won't be able to help her. Oh well, good luck to her hopefully she figures out what will work best for her.

Look, I'm sorry you got upset, and I didn't mean to offend you with my answer. There are definite drawbacks to the program and I have to admit that I don't have all of the answers.

For most people that come to us, they are under a mountain of debt, and going on IBR is a good first step as student loan debt is often a large piece of that debt. Of course, SL debt is better than CC debt, the latter usually has double digit interest rates and no programs like IBR etc.

Once their financial situation improves they can start throwing more money at their monthly IBR payments, which will benefit their long term situation.

[riverwed070707]

My husband and I have about 60,000 worth of student loans. It is all from his graduate school. He graduated one year ago. He was able to get a good job, but we are still struggling to make the monthly payments. I am a stay at home mom. I have recently begun looking for flexible work I can do remotely. I do not want to do a MLM or sales type business. Any suggestions on other work I can do? I have a customer service background and most recently I was a cost estimator for an engineering company. Most online non -sales jobs have to do with building and maintaining websites. Any companies or websites I should check out? Thank you!

Legit, well paying work from home opportunities are hard to find. How old are the kids? If school aged, can you look for something with "moms hours" that still allow you to take them to and from school? If not, maybe part-time daycare while you work a 15-20/week job. When we were in debt payoff mode, I picked up a bartending gig 2 nights a week. Hours suck but it allowed me to be home for dinner with the family and then scoot out after DD went to bed and I made $200-300/week. It was worth it until things became more manageable.