Articles Posted in Student loans

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Dear X,

Congratulations! The Biden-Harris Administration has forgiven your federal student loan(s) listed below with Nelnet in full.

This debt relief was processed as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s one-time account adjustment because your student loan(s) have been in repayment of at least 20 or 25 years. An adjustment to your account updated the number of payments that qualify towards income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness. This forgiveness is effective as of 05/15/2020.

Loan Program Disbursement Date Original

Principal Banance

DIRECT CONSOL 05/15/20 $424,214.20

 

Log in to your account for details.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Here are some important points on this IDR forgiveness:

  • Due to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 the balance of your loans that were forgiven is not considered taxable income for federal income tax purposes. Since state and local tax implications will vary, we recommend you contact a tax advisor for more information.

 

  • Not all your federal student loans may be represented in the table above as you may have begun repaying each loan on a different date. If you have federal student loans that are not included in the table, please continue to make payments on them. Payments are not required until after the payment pause ends at the end of August. Your first payment will be due in October 2023. To find options to help with repayment, visit studentaid.gov.

 

  • We have notified, or will notify by the end of the month, all national credit bureaus of your student loan forgiveness.

 

  • If applicable, we’ll process a refund for any payments made towards the loans listed above after the effective date of this forgiveness.

 

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Christie_1Lots of federal student loan borrowers are in the same boat now.  Have you consolidated your loans in an effort to get onto SAVE for the lowest possible payment?  But it seems to have backfired because your payment is now enormous?

Here’s some tips that you may want to be aware of:

  • A new consolidation will always provide an initial payment based upon the 10 year standard.  A client today reported her payment was to be $2,000!  She knew not to be concerned however because the SAVE review hadn’t yet occurred.  It’s a two step process:  first, consolidation, then evaluation for SAVE.
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Well folks, it appears that the Department of Education may have just closed the loophole which led to Borrowers double consolidating Parent Plus loans in an effort to get onto the more payment friendly SAVE program rather than the much higher ICR – Income Contingent Plan.  By doing a double consolidation, often the code showing an underlying loan to be a Parent Plus loan was removed.

We’ve just learned of a new entry on the NSLDS report:  the “Parent Plus Consolidation Indicator.”

Our guess is they’ve done this to close the “glitch”. It will now be readily apparent if any underlying loan within a consolidation contained a PLUS loan.

 

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Christie_1Lots of people are doing the mental gymnastics to determine whether they qualify for a Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) now under the IDR recount for Direct loans.  More time will count under this program than ever before such as extended forbearances, extended or even graduated payment plans or even just weird payments made from time to time.  Re-dating of all the loans in a Direct consolidation to the earliest date etc.  For many, this IDR recount will be a back door to PSLF after having missed the October 31, 2022 deadline to apply for PSLF.  Once 120 months are accumulated under PSLF, any remaining balance will be forgiven.  It’s 20-25 years for non-public service.

Remember though, any months of employment before October 2007 won’t count toward public service.  PSLF was instituted in October 2007 and didn’t even exist before then.

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I just received this from someone who benefitted from our You Tube Channel:

  • After finally conquering my fear of addressing my massive student loan debt, I came across several of your videos on YouTube. On numerous occasions I felt as if you had my case right in front of you! The hope I immediately felt was indescribable!

Wow.  Love this.

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Christie_1If someone needs to consolidate their FFEL or Perkins, or even Direct loans on different timelines for forgiveness, we normally assist by walking someone through this during a phone call or zoom strategy session.  That way it is done and immediate.  There are times where a paper application is needed however and here are the addresses for this (send certified return receipt or FedEx/UPS with tracking number):

Aidvantage

PO Box 300005

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Christie_1How is it possible to wait too long to address student loan debt?

Right now, with the IDR recount working to forgive six figure debt for clients (yes, we are now seeing this occur – check your studentaid.gov site for your loan balance b/c servicers are running behind in getting the emails out), we strongly recommend that everyone with a FFEL or Perkins loan consider consolidating to a Direct loan.  Do that now.  If a lawsuit is filed that gains transaction to put a hold on the IDR recount, this relief may no longer be available.  It really is a race against time for the IDR recount I fear.

But what should you do if you have a private student loan?

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Christie_1The new IDR account adjustment going on right now may require that you consolidate your FFEL loans to Direct.  You may also want to consolidate differently dated Direct loans to one consolidation that will re-date all the loans to the earliest repayment date so you get as much credit toward your income driven plan forgiveness as possible.  This is particularly important for anyone who bifurcated their education and had a gap – no matter how small – between degrees.

There is much more information online and at your fingertips than you may believe.

You need to login to studentaid.gov & download your TXT file covering all of your federal loans.  Each loan is listed and for FFEL loans, the Servicer, Lender & Guarantor are listed so you can tell if FFEL is owned by ED or not.  FFEL loans owed by ED are covered by the IDR waiver/account adjustment.  Generally though, if you have a FFEL loan with anyone, including the Department of Education, it usually is best to change it to Direct for multiple reasons such as PSLF, SAVE etc.  There can be reasons not to though – and we’d recommend a strategy session with us where we can go over whether you should consolidate, how to do it, and often be by your side talking you through it.

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