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Wiggy Marie posted:If you're not actually registered at least half-time and attending classes they can't put a deferment/forbearance on there for you I know they can't put a deferment on if I'm not enrolled. What bugs me is that even when I enroll again, they still can't put a deferment on it. They told me so a couple weeks ago. I don't think I really have any options left, unless refinancing would give me another deferment period. Worst case scenario, I may just have to tell them to sit and spin, and if a default happens well then that's too bad but there's not much I can do about it. I'm getting that degree.
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Jun 1, 2017 22:15
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You need to call them and ask if there are any deferment/forbearance options available, but I know that a lot of private loans will have a payment to apply something like that, or alternately only have a few months of time available. Hopefully they can help you out, but go in with tempered expectations.
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These aren't going away. I hope the degree is one that will make you a lot of money.
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Jun 1, 2017 22:48
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I'm gonna pay it all off eventually, and I'm not opposed to making a few payments a year or something until I get my degree. I just can't really pay anything right this moment. EDIT: ... although I was hoping to go to grad school after graduation... so much for that dream. 
I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jun 1, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 23:00
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How big are these loans, how long have you been attending college, and how concrete is your plan to graduate in "a couple years"? Do you have every semester planned out with your department's advisor, knowing exactly what you need to take and in what order yet? If you just throw your hands up in the air and say "well sorry my destiny is X #yolo gently caress those guys" the balance is just going to increase drastically due to fees and eventually lawyer fees. Pryor on Fire fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 04:50
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goose willis posted:If I pay off a student loan in full, am I going to receive written confirmation that the loan is dead forever, or do I need to specifically ask for it? I can say for sure that Campus Partners (for a Perkins loan) does. Next month + however long they take to mail it out I should also be able to confirm re: Fedloan Servicing, I'm super close to paying my first one of those four off. 
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Jun 12, 2017 17:27
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Maybe a dumb question, but I'm thinking of refinancing my student loans through my credit union. How exactly does that work? Do they deposit the money in my checking account and I pay the loans off directly, or does the bank pay them off on my behalf (to make sure that the loan is actually going to the servicers?) Also, is there usually any kind of origination fee or whatever when I take out a new loan to refinance? I'm paying down my loans pretty quickly right now, will most likely be done some time next year. The amount I'll save on interest won't be that much, and if there are usually fees associated with it, I may not really be saving that much by refinancing. Obviously it most likely depends on the bank/terms, and I'll probably just go in and talk to someone, but I'm just curious. I didn't see any mention of fees on my banks website.
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Jun 14, 2017 12:08
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BAE OF PIGS posted:Maybe a dumb question, but I'm thinking of refinancing my student loans through my credit union. How exactly does that work? Do they deposit the money in my checking account and I pay the loans off directly, or does the bank pay them off on my behalf (to make sure that the loan is actually going to the servicers?) Also, is there usually any kind of origination fee or whatever when I take out a new loan to refinance? I'm paying down my loans pretty quickly right now, will most likely be done some time next year. The amount I'll save on interest won't be that much, and if there are usually fees associated with it, I may not really be saving that much by refinancing. I went through this process a few months ago with my credit union. The way it worked is that the bank directly paid off my old loan servicer, at which point I had a new account from said bank for the loan balance. I didn't have to pay any sort of origination fee. That said, every bank is different, so by all means read all the documentation you can or call the bank directly with any questions so you know exactly what you're agreeing to before you sign the paperwork. Also, uh, word of advice: You said you're paying your loans down quickly. If you have auto-debit for extra payments going to your hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-loan servicer, make sure you turn that off. Juggling paperwork and calling them to ask for a refund on an accidental extra payment is awkward.  EDIT: Also also, be ready to take a hit on your credit score. I refinanced about $42k and by the time the dust settled my credit score dropped about 30 points. If you're planning on making any big purchases soon (e.g. car, house), you may want to think twice since you said you wouldn't necessarily be saving a ton on interest anyway. GFBeach fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 14, 2017 23:40
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I'm having some issues with my IBR renewal. When I renewed a few weeks ago, the IRS Data Retrieval Tool was down, so I mailed in the paper form along with my tax return transcript to my servicer. I got a letter back saying I needed to send in income verification. By this time the Data Retrieval Tool was back up, so I used that to send the form to my servicer again. I received a letter back saying that I was not eligible for IBR with no explanation as to why, despite being on it for several years, and being well under the income threshold. I sent them an email, they responded with a form letter saying that my information was received and was being processed. I then called them, and they said everything was fine, my IBR application was on track for renewal, I should hear from them in early August, and they didn't know why they sent the denial letter. I'm not sure what to do at this point, my servicer has an Ombudsman that is supposed to handle customer complaints, should I reach out to this person or wait until August? I definitely cannot afford the payments if I'm not on an income based repayment plan. Edit: Servicer is MOHELA. Konstantin fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 23:39
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Konstantin posted:I'm having some issues with my IBR renewal. When I renewed a few weeks ago, the IRS Data Retrieval Tool was down, so I mailed in the paper form along with my tax return transcript to my servicer. I got a letter back saying I needed to send in income verification. By this time the Data Retrieval Tool was back up, so I used that to send the form to my servicer again. I received a letter back saying that I was not eligible for IBR with no explanation as to why, despite being on it for several years, and being well under the income threshold. I sent them an email, they responded with a form letter saying that my information was received and was being processed. I then called them, and they said everything was fine, my IBR application was on track for renewal, I should hear from them in early August, and they didn't know why they sent the denial letter. I'm not sure what to do at this point, my servicer has an Ombudsman that is supposed to handle customer complaints, should I reach out to this person or wait until August? I definitely cannot afford the payments if I'm not on an income based repayment plan. Trump.
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Jun 21, 2017 03:32
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Which servicer do you have?
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Jun 21, 2017 03:45
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My husband and I are starting to think about maybe procreation in the next few years. I'm currently on the IBR plan, so my payments are 10% of our adjusted gross income. If we have a kid, will that effect the percentage at all?
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Jul 4, 2017 00:53
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Household size will increase, would decrease loans by an amount. You can play around with doe ibr calculator and change family size or what ever it's called
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Jul 4, 2017 05:38
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The Slack Lagoon posted:Household size will increase, would decrease loans by an amount. You can play around with doe ibr calculator and change family size or what ever it's called For some reason, when I log in to try out the calculator it thinks I have zero loans, which is obviously not true. The fsa and studentloans.gov sites piss me off to no end, nothing ever works correctly. Every year when I recertify for the IBR plan something goes wrong!
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Jul 4, 2017 07:15
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remigious posted:For some reason, when I log in to try out the calculator it thinks I have zero loans, which is obviously not true. The fsa and studentloans.gov sites piss me off to no end, nothing ever works correctly. Every year when I recertify for the IBR plan something goes wrong! I never actually log in, I manually add loan types/balances so I'm not familiar with the login.
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Jul 4, 2017 20:26
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Just a tip for anyone else who might end up going through this process, but I learned today that Fed Loan Servicing will not use auto-pay for the one month's forbearance payment if you are switching to REPAYE as a repayment plan. They created a bill for the one month (that they didn't actually email to me) but no where on it does it say anything about auto-pay. Logged onto my account today and found it was past due. Talked to one of their reps who claims this won't actually impact getting enrolled in REPAYE or reflect poorly on my account/credit. I don't think I trust what their phone reps say too much, guess I'm watching my account like a hawk the next couple of months. 
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Aug 22, 2017 20:17
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Ugh so I'm stuck at home more or less between now and (eventually getting into) a grad school program. My federal loans aren't set to require payment until January. Seeing as I'm in a position without rent or utilities to pay, I guess I should just throw as much excess money as possible into my 27k balance? Any other tips I should know? I spent 75% of my past two checks on repayments. If it has any difference on the situation, these loans are all federal, with about a 50/50 split on subsidized/unsubsidized buglord fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 23:14
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Pay minimums on all of them, put extra to unsubsidized. I believe that when you start school again the subsided shouldn't accumulate more interest
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Aug 24, 2017 23:25
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How does being a convicted felon effect your eligibility for receiving student loans? The crime was a non drug related offense, and non- aggravated.
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Aug 31, 2017 17:40
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When I was in the business the only felony which prevented aid from being available was a drug-related conviction while receiving federal aid (war on drugs  ) or actually being in jail. Looks like this pretty much the same now. The FAFSA is what they use to determine that (these loans don't involve a background check). https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/eligibility/criminal-convictions PS: studentaid.ed.gov is a great resource for federal program information! Wiggy Marie fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 20:01
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Well after reading that, quite the opposite! Unless you have a conviction for some seriously hosed up crime- then you can even get federal aid WHILE in prison! That's pretty great for all the non-drug, non-violent offenders. If your parents do not want to give you their Tax information for FAFSA filing purposes, will this cost you more money, or prevent you from getting sufficient loans? Or does it just make them all Unsub, and guarantee you as independent? Dennis McClaren fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Sep 1, 2017 |
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Sep 1, 2017 18:03
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Dennis McClaren posted:Well after reading that, quite the opposite! Unless you have a conviction for some seriously hosed up crime- then you can even get federal aid WHILE in prison! That's pretty great for all the non-drug, non-violent offenders. Students who are considered dependent must provide parental information except in extenuating circumstances, as determined by the financial aid office. This document has a nice breakdown of the situations which immediately qualify you as independent: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/sites/default/files/fafsa-dependency.pdf For example, if you were born before Jan 1st, 1994, you're independent and don't need to worry about parental information.
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Sep 1, 2017 19:22
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Yo my loan servicer (Nelnet) is sending my payments to my interest accrued instead of my actual loan (principal?). My interest is practically cleared out now, so it's no longer an issue. But is it better to prioritize paying off the principal first in the future? Also it's probably worth it to note that I don't have to pay yet. That's in about 6 months. I hear when I have to start paying, my payments have to hit interest first, but I can voluntarily put extra money towards my principal after?
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Sep 5, 2017 15:24
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buglord posted:Yo my loan servicer (Nelnet) is sending my payments to my interest accrued instead of my actual loan (principal?). My interest is practically cleared out now, so it's no longer an issue. But is it better to prioritize paying off the principal first in the future? Your payments have to clear the interest first before any of it applies to principal. Nothing goes to principal if there is still interest left over. Here are some scenarios if you have a $100 minimum payment: Scenario 1 Before payment Interest accrued: $55 Principal amount: $10,000 After payment Interest accrued: $0 Principal amount: $9,955 Scenario 2 Before payment Interest accrued: $200 Principal amount: $10,000 After payment Interest accrued: $100 Principal amount: $10,000 Scenario 3 Before payment Interest accrued: $55 Principal amount: $10,000 After payment Interest accrued: $0 Principal amount: $9,955 Now you make an additional $100 payment at the same time as your minimum payment After additional payment Interest accrued: $0 Principal amount: $9,855 Scenario 4 Before payment Interest accrued: $200 Principal amount: $10,000 After payment Interest accrued: $100 Principal amount: $10,000 Now you make an additional $100 payment at the same time as your minimum payment After additional payment Interest accrued: $0 Principal amount: $10,000 You can write or request that they apply additional payments right to principal all you want, but by law for federal loans, if there's accrued interest or fees, your payments must clear those first before they can start reducing principal.
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Sep 5, 2017 16:54
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How often do appeals for FAFSA denials come back, successful? Are they only given for very small, minor issues you might have screwed up on your FAFSA? Or do appeals actually work in a good number of situations? Dennis McClaren fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Sep 5, 2017 |
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Sep 5, 2017 18:01
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My wife is a physician and has fairly substantial loans from medical school - ~130k. She refinanced/aggregated at some point and we're paying about $2500/month right now and her rates are 3.5% on 75k and 6.5% on 55k. We're on pace to pay it all off in 2022 right now. My dad mentioned the possibility of an intra-family loan to pay off our student loan, increase his return relative to his retirement portfolio and reduce our rate. This seems like a no-brainer in that it would reduce my total interest from ~18k to 10k if I go from ~5% to 3% annual rates, but I'm not sure how challenging the paperwork and tax accounting will be. I'd also like flexibility to repay faster if possible and I'm not sure if that will further complicate the tax picture. I'm assuming this is something to go to a tax attorney about, but I just want a quick sanity check to see if it is indeed feasible and worthwhile.
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Sep 8, 2017 15:13
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Velius posted:My wife is a physician and has fairly substantial loans from medical school - ~130k. She refinanced/aggregated at some point and we're paying about $2500/month right now and her rates are 3.5% on 75k and 6.5% on 55k. We're on pace to pay it all off in 2022 right now. https://blog.taxact.com/family-loans-lend-my-kids-money/ The answer seems to be "totally fair, he'll have to pay tax on the income charged, but you can continue to deduct the loan interest" although you probably CAN'T because you're a DOCTOR and you make TOO MUCH MONEY for student loan debt to count! But yeah this is definitely an option.
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Sep 8, 2017 16:28
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"Don't mix family and debt" is one of the big rules I believe in from listening to Dave Ramsey for years. $8k isn't worth the risk of what happens to family relationships if something goes wrong and you are losing the protections inherant to student loans presuming they are federal and not private.
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Sep 9, 2017 07:36
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Sub Rosa posted:"Don't mix family and debt" is one of the big rules I believe in from listening to Dave Ramsey for years. $8k isn't worth the risk of what happens to family relationships if something goes wrong and you are losing the protections inherant to student loans presuming they are federal and not private. Ordinarily I'm very much on board with this philosophy. If this were only an arrangement that benefited me, I wouldn't bother. But doing it provides benefits to both of us, 8k to me and 10k to him (since the moneys would be coming from an essentially zero interest retirement savings account). The losing party, in as much as there is one, is the lending party. Defaulting isn't really on the menu even in case of disaster - we have disability and life insurance as well. EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:https://blog.taxact.com/family-loans-lend-my-kids-money/ Right. Thanks for the link, now I just need to think about the practicality of getting it done correctly. I don't particularly want to be audited because I used a vehicle typically employed for exceeding the annual gift limit if I can avoid it.
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Sep 9, 2017 12:18
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Velius posted:Ordinarily I'm very much on board with this philosophy. If this were only an arrangement that benefited me, I wouldn't bother. But doing it provides benefits to both of us, 8k to me and 10k to him (since the moneys would be coming from an essentially zero interest retirement savings account). The losing party, in as much as there is one, is the lending party. Defaulting isn't really on the menu even in case of disaster - we have disability and life insurance as well. The answer, as always, is clear and coherent documentation on both ends. Make sure any fees you pay for this service don't destroy the benefits to the parties involved.
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Sep 9, 2017 17:17
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:https://blog.taxact.com/family-loans-lend-my-kids-money/ I'm not sure that blog is correct. IRS.gov posted:Student Loan Interest Defined
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Sep 14, 2017 02:23
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I posted awhile ago in the newbie finance thread about refinancing student loans, but then I got distracted by irl stuff, but now I have a better chance to push some things around. Also because I'm sick of what seems like broken links on the Navient page. My main goal with this is lower mandatory minimum payments for greater flexibility with future monthly bills and budgets. My remaining student loans are with Navient and Nelnet. I'm not sure where exactly to start, is this something I go to a separate bank like Wells Fargo for, do I route around government websites for this, or do I take advantage of things like Navient's built in repayment plans and try to bundle Nelnet into those? To be honest, some of my big uncertainties for this come from a distrust of Navient specifically and current United States government affairs.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:14
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First step is, are they Federal loans or private loans, and what is your timeframe for paying them off?
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Sep 29, 2017 14:48
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Hi thread, I've got some student loans I've basically been ignoring for a couple of years that I'd like to stop ignoring now that I'm not insanely poor. I have about 25k in loans w/ Navient that are currently in IBR because I was once an irresponsible and unemployed youth. I just got an email today letting me know that the payment amount would be increasing by about $30 (to about $280/mo total on the 25k) and that this will be the most I ever pay under this plan. None of the loans has more than $1.50 in unpaid interest, if that matters. I've been tossing a couple of hundred additional dollars a month at the highest interest rate loans for the past few months, and am just wondering if I should be switching over to standard plan and continuing to do this or if it doesn't make much of a difference. There's all sorts of scary words on the Navient website about how switching away from IBR will set my house on fire and drown my first born child and poo poo but I assume that switching out of IBR just results in me paying less money to them and so they're just trying to scare me out of making a reasonable decision (because they are evil).
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Sep 29, 2017 14:56
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The March Hare posted:Hi thread, I've got some student loans I've basically been ignoring for a couple of years that I'd like to stop ignoring now that I'm not insanely poor. They put that scary language there for the people with a lot of unpaid interest that would capitalize once they get off IBR. Which plan has the lower minimum payment? You'd want to go with the plan with the lower minimum payments (most likely IBR) if you're committed to paying extra on your highest interest rate loans. For example, if you can only pay $480 towards your student loans, a $280 minimum payment allows you to pay $200 towards the higher rate loan vs. a $330 minimum payment that would only let you pay $150 towards the higher rate loan. However, if you can still pay $200 on top of a higher minimum payment, then you'd pay off your loans quicker by virtue of the fact you're paying more money each month than before and less overall on the life of the loan. Though if you could pay that higher amount anyway, you'd probably still spend less with the lower minimum payment because fewer of your dollars are being spent less optimally on lower rate loans.
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Sep 29, 2017 15:12
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Ancillary Character posted:They put that scary language there for the people with a lot of unpaid interest that would capitalize once they get off IBR. That makes sense, when I started writing the post I actually didn't know how my interest looked. My concern, which I guess I lost in the midst of posting, was that maybe some of my payments under the IBR weren't paying off interest and so, in moving away from IBR, I might have auto-shifted my minimum payments such that I was always at least paying interest on all loans, thereby enabling me to more easily keep interest down while paying off my highest rate loan with the extra cash. I guess I'm in an OK spot though, so that is good. I'm not sure which plan would be lower, because I can't figure out how to get those kinds of numbers from the Navient website. I'll figure that out and switch based on that, while trying to keep my total payments around $600/mo which should have me on a pretty happy track for repayment.
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Sep 29, 2017 15:38
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The Slack Lagoon posted:First step is, are they Federal loans or private loans, and what is your timeframe for paying them off? Navient loans are private Sallie Mae and scheduled to end 2024. Nelnet loans are "Stafford," all but one are subsidized. I cannot find a time frame on the site for these loans.
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Sep 30, 2017 16:17
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I have some grad school federal loans I was looking to consolidate and refinance. I graduated around 6 years ago and I'm on track to pay them off in around 4 more. I'd like to refinance a bit because I want to sock more away for retirement. I was sitting around a 6.8% interest rate on all of them and SoFi was offering around a 4.9% fixed rate for me. (Both rates don't include autopay deduction). My local credit union doesn't offer refinancing, though there's another one I might look into. Doing a 5 year refi seems like it would lower my monthly bill and actually cost me less at this point. I was wondering what exact benefits I'd be losing if I'd refinance now that I'm well past graduation.
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Oct 6, 2017 15:50
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If your employment is stable and you plan on paying them off and not getting forgiveness then refi for a lower rate and save some money. If employment is stable and you think you might need fedeal loan protections then don't refi.
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Oct 6, 2017 17:01
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I have a single private student loan outstanding with some truly insane terms (20 year repayment, variable rate is prime minus 1%.) I have a stable, well paying job, and the idea of paying that much in interest bothers me a bit. Also, I should say that the rate has been creeping up but it's definitely not anywhere near oppressive - currently sitting at 3%. The servicer is AES, if it matters. Is there a financial difference between refinancing this and just plowing extra money into it each month? It feels like I could just compute the monthly payments I would make on a hypothetical 5 year refinance, make them on my current loan, and re-evaluate if the variable rate pops up another percentage point or so. Obviously, getting out from the variable rate would be a generically good idea, but that's a touch hard to quantify. Incidentally I think I posted about this exact private loan before I entered school...EDIT: lol yeah I did. I was told not to take the private variable rate loan. I did not listen but I promise I carefully measured the advice. 
Boxman fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 12:35
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| # ? May 14, 2024 15:22 |
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I am not sure where you are going to get a better rate on a shorter term. Just pay as much as you can over the minimum each month would be my advice.
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Oct 11, 2017 13:37
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