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My wife has one last semester of Grad school and will be done mid-August. So now we need to figure out loan consolidation. Currently I have one loan I am making payments (minimal, but now is a good opportunity to start proactively paying it off). She had almost all scholarships in College, so I don't think she has much of anything but the upcoming grad loans. My loan is divided into subsidized and unsubsidized Type: Direct Consol $13,000 Subsidized Rate: 5.875%, they mark it down to 5.63% because i am on auto-debit My second loan: Type: Direct Consol $1800 Unsubsidized Same rate Both are under Ed Financial. My wife's loans I need to figure out tonight, I know she has a combo of federal and private loans. My main question is if there is anyway to consolidate our loans together (or is that a good idea)? I'll update with her info whenever I can get it from her, the next question is basically best way to pay it off?
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Jun 20, 2013 14:48
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 03:27 |
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Slowly getting all the info on consolidating loans and paying them off: Wife's undergrad loans: Sallie Mae: $5,566.0 at 6.8% Great Lake loans: $2500 at 1.75% (can that be correct?) My undergrad: Ed Financial: $13,045 at 5.65% $1860 at 5.65% We have an impending $50-60K in grad loans as my wife is about to finish grad school. But out of these, is there anything i should do differently or consolidate? The obvious seems to be to take care of Sallie Mae first.
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Aug 12, 2013 15:25
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Anyone see this yet? http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/the-white-house-wants-to-help-you-make-smaller-student-loan-payments/278948/ Given that it takes a long time for a loan to be completely forgiven, I'm guessing it's still best to pay off the loan, but I'm just curious on other opinions.
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Aug 23, 2013 13:48
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:This. I don't ever plan on having kids but on the low chance that I do I'm going to do a lot better than my parents did, who basically told me "You gotta go to college!!" and then passively nagged me about what I was planning to do with my major instead of actually forcing me to have a real discussion about what my life goals might be. I think this is a major issue for basically everyone in the 18-28 generation. For benefit of the doubt, either tuition was lower for our parents when they went to school, or our parents didn't go to college, so its either a misperception on how badly costs have sky rocketed, the dream of getting your kid to the level you couldn't get to, or a combo of both. I'm all for education, but yeah I think we are hitting a plateau cost wise. My favorite is schools asking alumni for donations. I liked my school, but gently caress giving them more money.
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Aug 27, 2013 16:51
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systran posted:My wife just got her PhD degree in Pharmacology. She is working on taking the test that would qualify her for residency, because she doesn't really want to do research-based work anymore. She mentioned to me last night that she thinks she should just stop dicking around and get a Physician's Assistant degree because that is what every employer is looking for now. My wife went through getting a degree recently for a similar reason, so it's just a matter of risking the loans and education vs getting the job (aka will the education pay off). I don't know that field at all, but if it seems likely to happen that's a good income level to start at even with that amount of loans. If she does it, I would say she should go full time and get it done as quickly as possible.
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Aug 30, 2013 12:23
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So I could use some help. My wife went to school and we are now quite a bit in student loan debt. We took our the loans when she started school and honestly, looking at it now we probably were not smart about how much and how. So I am realizing we were probably stupid. But any help could really be appreciated. Student loans Direct unsub stafford loan $22,064.33 at 6.8% Direct student plus loan $13,061 at 7.9% Direct student plus loan $17,506 at 7.9% interest Direct sub stafford loan $6,375.00 at 6.8% interest Direct unsub stafford loan $10,347 at 6.8% interest Direct student plus loan $10,562 at 7.9% interest Total: $80,168.60 Right now the loans are all through fed loan servicing. What I'm taking out of this is the interest is crazy high for a lot of these, so I would love to know if there is a way to consolidate and get the rates down. We have good credit, pay our bills on time, and I have an emergency fund. I am looking at payment options, and the standRd payment over 10 years is stretching our budget a lot. Certainly the graduated payments would do better for is for now, but I don't want to pay less now to necessarily dig a hole for later. Any thoughts on the best way to organize this mess and start getting things on the right track? Side note, she works two part time jobs to equal 40 hours a week and 30 of those hours is a public institution.
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Mar 24, 2014 03:51
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EugeneJ posted:IBR those fuckers and she might qualify for loan forgiveness in 10 years: What's nice is her other job is a non profit, so between her 40 hours a week she seems to qualify for that.
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Mar 24, 2014 04:07
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SiGmA_X posted:What's her degree in? 80k in education means pretty good salary, right? Ugh, no. Her degree was in library science, so right now she is working two part time jobs to talking about 22K a year. To her credit she at least has this, since there are quite a few from that field that just can't find any jobs. In theory a full time job in that field should be 50K, but she hasn't gotten that yet. On the plus side, she does really enjoy the work, so it's a field she is happy to be in. On the downside obviously the expense should have been much better planned. Honestly, we have already had our fights and debates on that, and are on the same page now that it was just probably not well thought out. What can you do. I make $55-60K a year, so the positive is that between salaries we are honestly fine, and the real silver lining is whenever she gets said better paying job it'll really give us financial breathing room on this. We currently live in Philly (so fairly expensive cost of living) and in probably two years we will move somewhere with a lower cost of living too. Probably anyway. But yeah, rant aside, I would live ideas on how to best tackle this.
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Mar 24, 2014 11:54
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Duckman2008 posted:So I could use some help. My wife went to school and we are now quite a bit in student loan debt. We took our the loans when she started school and honestly, looking at it now we probably were not smart about how much and how. So I am realizing we were probably stupid. But any help could really be appreciated. To quote this, is there any reason to go with http://www.custudentloans.org or any type of loan consolidation?
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Mar 26, 2014 23:35
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Wiggy Marie posted:Agreed. You want to keep your federal loans as federal loans, because they do have lots of benefits that private loans don't (mainly the deferments and forbearances, better repayment plans, etc.). Ok great. There are links on consolidating on the fed loan website, so I am going to try and figure that out. Seeing that my loans were at interest rates like 7.9%, 6.5%, etc just made me want to cry. So if I can fix that I would feel a lot better. Duckman2008 fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 02:12
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So I need help figuring out student loans. My wife currently has $83,400 in grad loans at rates of 7-8% for most of them. 1. She has worked the last 1-2 years 30 hours in one job (public librarian), 8 hours at another job (also public librarian) 2. She now got a full time job (hooray) that starts in January as a full time librarian at the county level (so public) 3. Income at said job is $45K a year with 7% 401k match (and other benefits). For context I make about $60K a year depending on OT and Commission (and 6% match) 4. One major question will be whether the 10 year mark starts from when we started paying, or from January when she goes full time. 5. Loans are consolidated through Fedloan. 6. We have been paying about $550 towards her loans monthly, which is the minimum they gave us when factoring her income and my income. Edit: other context: we have about $3K left on my car, $15K on my loans, $7K on her undergrad loans, in terms of other things that would be nice to pay off. On researching online, this is a nice rosy article on supporting pay minimums for 10 years: http://www.edcentral.org/beware-savvy-borrowers-using-income-based-repayment/ So if you look at this advice, the advice is basically get monthly payments as low as possible (on just her income it could go down to $200) and just get the debt forgiven. And this is a nice not rosy article on having to pay a poo poo Ton of taxes when forgiven: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/27/the-hidden-trap-of-income-based-repayment.html And this advice saying I might gently caress yourself by having $80,000 in extra income to pay taxes on one year. Which if you take a basic tax of 40%, is $32,000 owed. So yeah, when does my 10 year countdown start by, what do I need to file to get The 10 years started, and how should I approach paying this? I'm researching it more, but advice on the best option would be welcome. Duckman2008 fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Dec 24, 2015 |
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Dec 24, 2015 11:42
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Hi thread ! We too have to now re figure out student loans. Quick background: Wife has a lot of student loans. I have $0 or close to zero (the provider for mine is currently showing they’re gone with what I assume was the $10 forgiveness that got rejected, so not sure if that will stick or not). My wife has worked off and on in non profits and public sector like libraries. She is currently a librarian at a city library. We’ve paid off and on, deferred a lot, def deferred the last 3 years. By my quick math, we have paid 3.5-4 years worth of payments in terms of qualifying towards 10 year forgiveness. Obviously no payments the last 3 years, so I assume those years don’t count. We have filed taxes married jointly the entire time. With the new SAVE, it spits out our monthly payments would go from $550 to $850ish. So….obviously we are fortunate that our incomes went up (specifically mine), but yeah that sucks. Her income in its own is $45k. So I’m thinking a plan of: -defer until next tax filing in February ish -file married separately -probably pay a lot more in tax -but submit for SAVE so the monthly payments are way lower -long term pay less in student loans than in the higher taxes for separate filing -get loans forgiven at the 10 year payment mark, pay as little as possible on the way. I’m going to be talking to our tax guy, but that’s my hope. Any input, am I off on this, etc ?
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Aug 20, 2023 17:07
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 03:27 |
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Wiggy Marie posted:The deferred payments during COVID do count. My biggest recommendation is to have your wife certify her employment with every place she's worked while she's been in repayment, including during COVID. MOHELA will calculate her remaining payments for her once this is on file. Even if we had it under forbearance the past 3 years? And yeah, I’m working on gathering the EINs of each place and filing.
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Aug 20, 2023 20:18
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