Escaping Student Loans
October 21st, 2008 AdminEscaping Student Loans
If you are planning to go on to graduate school, you are probably going to end up with a lot of student debts. College students who go to graduate school often end up with over $100,000 in student loans. Most of these students don’t realize that Congress recently passed a new law that could eliminate this debt forever.
In 2007, Congress passed a new law that could benefit thousands of students across the nation. This law was enacted to give aid to “highly indebted college graduates who go to work in critical but often low-paying professions.”
This program is called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness act. It allows people who work in qualifying jobs to have all of their federal loans forgiven. The borrowers have to be unable to repay their entire student loan debt after 10 years of regular payments. After these 120 payments have been paid, the remaining interest and balance can be forgiven.
This sounds pretty good right? So, which jobs qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program? There are many. Here are some jobs that do qualify:
- Military service
- All government jobs, whether federal, state or local
- Police and fire departments
- Social work
- Public education
- Public health care
- Public and school libraries
- Education in high-need areas
- Nonprofit, tax-exempt 401(c)3 organizations
There are a few catches though. The program can’t help you in you are struggling to make your payments right now. Loan forgiveness comes only after the 10 years of repayment. Only payments that are made to the federal Direct Loan program qualify for the program. Additionally, the only payments that count are those that were made after October 2007.
Check out the Public Service Loan Forgiveness act if you are looking for ways to decrease the amount of student loans that you have. Your debt could be completely eliminated after only 120 payments. This might be the only way to get your family back on track after years of school.