My Student Loan Forgiveness!
I shared this news on my social media and I want to share it with you too. On 1/4/23, I was given student loan forgiveness through the Public Services Loan Forgiveness Program with the federal government. I have been involved with this program since 2018 when I first applied and like many, I didn’t think I would ever get to this spot. I also didn’t believe I would make the 120 payments since many times I put my loans in deferment because I could not afford the payments or the company that had my loans encouraged me to put them into deferment. As a social worker, I often did not get paid well and being a single parent at the same time was really hard so getting to 120 payments seemed like it would never happen.
Thankfully, the limited waiver along with COVID helped to push me over the edge to student loan forgiveness. As of 1/4/23, I had $163,393.61 forgiven which was a combination of both my undergraduate and graduate degrees.
I don't want to bore anyone with any more details except to share what I did to get to this point and I believe it will help you to gain student loan forgiveness. The following tips/suggestions are once given to me and others that I created myself. Good luck and please let me know if you too found them to be helpful.
Student Loan Forgiveness Tips:
Read https://studentaid.gov/pslf/ throughly to understand the program as best as you can. Bookmark this page, print it out and highlight it. I created a binder with all the information from the public service loan forgiveness program.
Obtain all your payment records from the first one you made to the most current one you made. This is just in case there is a discrepancy with what is reported to you by Mohela. Currently MOHELA is the one managing this program and they don’t have the best track record.
Create a log to document all your phone calls and get the name/employee number of the person you spoke with when you call MOHELA. This way you have a record and can track your own progress.
If you cannot make a payment or it is not affordable, ask for an income based repayment program. Also, make sure you are not automatically put into deferment. This will happen once you ask a different payment option. Also make sure the payment will qualify for PSLF.
Make your payments on time and look into an automatic payment which will reduce some of your interest rate.
Make sure you consolidate into direct loans which are the ones that qualify for PSLF.
Join the Facebook group for the PSLF:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/pslfprogramsupport/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT
Finally, add your name and information to organizations advocating for general student loan forgiveness. Even if you have obtained forgiveness, someone else can benefit from it too.
Check out these resources to get involved:
https://studentdebtcrisis.org/
If you like these posts, please share them with your follow social workers and follow me on social media. I am most active on Instagram #laurieeldred_lmsw_caadc
