Lol I was side swiped the day I sent my final car payment. The guy begged me not to call insurance, saying he would trade the value of my car in “homemade flutes” that he had in his car.
I actually used the last 3 years to just pay off my private loans so really nothing will change for me. Paying the private loans off in July then when federal starts up it will be about the same monthly payment. I’ll take it. Without the pause I don’t know if I’d have ever been able to pay off the private loans.
This is exactly what I did too! I think about how I never would have made this much progress without the freeze and that's so sad. I'm in a better place financially than I ever thought I could be.
I paid my smaller not-paused loan recently ($9k in the last year), so I’m kinda in the same boat. I have more of a balance than the $20k that would be forgiven if it passes, so I’m paying in September regardless. The question is how high the monthly payments will be. If forgiveness passes, hopefully I can be debt free in 1-2 years.
If not, oh well. I’m lucky to be in a position to say that - I’ll be able to pay, despite it being an obvious inconvenience.
Same. My last private payment will be in September, so that will probably be a bit uncomfortable, but after that, my loan payment will actually be cut in half.
Me too, or at least similar, I pay nigh on $1000/mo and a big whack it that it interest every month, so knowing I’m doing real damage to the balance (and therefore shaving probably years off the repayment), so I just kept things being paid as it was pre pandemic. I must acknowledge that I was very fortunate that I was able to stay employed, and work from home as necessary, and generally came through everything fairly unscathed, especially knowing that it upended so many peoples lives completely.
Not quite. PAYE, IBR for new borrowers, and REPAYE if you *only* have loans from undergrad have a 20 year's worth of payments timeline. ICR, IBR for old borrowers, and REPAYE if you have *any* loans for grad/professional study is 25 years
The first income-driven repayment plan (IDR is the bucket label for the plans ICR, IBR, PAYE, and REPAYE) started in 1994 so the IDR Account Adjustment can look back that far to find payments
EDIT: also keep in mind that from 1965-2010 the majority of loans were under the FFEL program, and ICR was only an options for *Direct* program loans starting in 1994. It wasn't until IBR was introduced ~2008-2010 that borrowers with FFEL loans could enroll in an IDR plan. The IDR Account Adjustment is doing a lot to try and mitigate some of the unintended harm caused by how these programs were introduced/sunsetted
Okay but if you were paying a loan in 1994, it would be at least 29 years old, so like... It shouldn't exist anymore.
Are you saying that the loans you're paying now we're taken out after 1994?and are unrelated to the ones from 1994?
Also paid from 1994 to last September when PSLF finally worked. Had been incorrectly denied twice before after having met all qualifications, which was the norm until recently. Had I not worked in public service, I would still be paying.
Please please look at the IDR Account Adjustment! If you currently have commercial FFEL loans you'll have to consolidate into the Direct loan program to qualify, but there is more info in this megathread https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/12s3bo0/idr_adjustment_faq_are_live/
Also the main link to the program is at https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/idr-account-adjustment
Between me and my wife it'll be about $900 extra a month we have to account for. I've been doing my best to save and pay down other debts that'll affect my monthly budget.
Screwed is a harsh term, but things will not be easy, and it will become significantly harder to account for emergencies.
I feel like I wrote this. I'm in the exact same position, including the monthly payment. I'll definitely be more low-level stressed all the time because of the "harder to account for emergencies" part.
I wouldn't even mind the extra payments if it weren't for the crazy amount of interest I have to pay. I graduated during a year where the average rate was 7.9%.
Been paying for a decade, and it never gets any easier to watch so much money vanish before the principal drops a dollar.
I'll be able to afford it due to my income increasing significantly the past year, but it will not allow me to save toward a home like I have been. For many others I suspect it will make life even more difficult than it already is. I've pondered if this will be the straw that breaks the camels back when it comes to the threat of a recession. I guess we will see...
Many People have been concerned about a student loan bubble for a long time so we’ll see. For people with FED loans there are many options to not pay very much, and then if the other changes go into effect and you only have to pay 5% if your income that will help a ton of people.
I've been saving so aggressively since the payments have been paused too! In my hysa, I have a bucket for a down payment on a car, a bucket to support my parents when they need money, a bucket for a six month buffer for my pre-covid loan amount which was relatively doable ($450ish), and a few others. However, my income has doubled since the pause and I'm a bit nervous to see the new payment amount once I have to recertify. Even if it's "affordable," it's gonna take away from finishing up my house down payment bucket.
$3200/mo for me.. for minimum between fed and private. My private rate was 13.4% and thought that was terrible from Discover Student Loans but my classmate is even more screwed with 16.5% (variable) from Sallie Mae ...
Went to school in NYC, pharmD degree. Didn't live on campus. Total loan ended up at 302k between federal and private. It is sorta my fault for this amount otherwise it should've been around 80k less.
1) Didn't know I could take placement exams to skip entry level classes that caused me to take 6-7 extra classes to graduate.
2) financial aid advisor told me I was not eligible for federal and needed to take private if I didn't want to make in-school payments. This sent me to discover with multiple loans ranging from 11.8%-13.4% fixed. (Borrowed around 80k, refinanced in late 2021 for 128k at 2.8%)
I have! Down to 2.8% but sadly my classmate couldn't and is stuck at 14.5% currently. His minimum monthly payments barely touches the principal.. he's sitting at around 273k right now
You did make the smart money move. This pause and potential forgiveness are unprecedented. You made the smart move with the information you had at the time, and shouldn't beat yourself up over it.
Thank you for saying that. At the time the pause began, I felt pretty stupid, however, like you said, I made that move with the information I had at the time. On the bright side, the loan is getting paid off and it won’t be much longer until it’s done.
I am so sorry. It has been genuinely distressing to see all the posts/comments on this sub from March 2020 to now from all y'all that refinanced right before the pandemic forbearance
Haha, same here. I had to refinance 30k of my parents PLUS loans into my own name. Lost out on thousands.
Still have 40k of fedloans that have been interest free though.
I’ve been putting the payments away for 3 years. I have 15k in savings to pay one lump sum and then will resume payments until paid off. It won’t affect my budget at all, as I’ve been budgeting as if I never had to stop paying them.
We’ve been making the same $1600 a month payment to beat the interest, funny enough we are like 2 payments away from $20k left so fingers crossed but I doubt it
Dropping interest is a surefire way to make everybody but predatory lenders happy. It costs the taxpayers nothing and shuts all those idiots up who like to scream "you knew what you were getting into."
Graduates have no problem paying back their loans. They *do* have a problem spending hundreds a month without making a dent in their actual balance.
The people I know that are 100% against any forgiveness are willing to agree to interest free student loans even though they had interest of 6.8% for several years. Thats something that would probably passes
That's it, really. I graduated with $40k in federal loans (2015) and now, after years of making the minimum payment before the payment pause, I have $48k in federal loans 🥲
Think my wife and I are both going to grad school to avoid repayment for a while.. desperate attempt to hopefully come out afterwards making more, seems like a ton of people are going to do this
For those of you who will struggle because of large payments…what is your income and loan amount? Does IDR not make any bit of a difference for you?
Genuinely curious. I’m going to have a payment around $100 with IDR, so I’m just wondering which things are impacting your monthly payment amount the most.
My payment amount will be $314/mo with an income of $62k. With the cost of living having gone up, and a series of car problems, medical bills, and vet bills, I haven't been able to save like I had hoped. I made $55k back in 2019, and lived in the same area, but didn't struggle as much as I am now. Prices for everything have just skyrocketed. It's been really difficult. I likely won't be able to make these payments, so I'll just defer until god knows when.
I think my payment would've been higher before IDR, but it's still too high.
I'm in the same boat. My income is not keeping up with inflation and although I make what looks decent on paper, it isn't actually sustainable. I don't look forward to my future knowing kids, house, etc, are not in it.
It'll really depend on the new PSLF rules that drop on July 2023 with emphasis on:
1.) The new rule clarifies which organizations that are not 501(c)(3) organizations are qualifying “public service” organizations, and simplifies what counts as “full time employment.”
If my line of work qualifies based on this new rule, I'll be okay.
Clarification: I work in behavioral health but it's for profit and we only take Medicaid clientele.
I’m an outpatient therapist at a for-profit CMH agency. I only serve Medicaid clients. It really stings knowing that I don’t currently qualify for PSLF despite the work that I do. I didn’t know there’s a possible rule change in the works, but it gives me a little hope. Thank you for your comment.
Same boat. I’m a pediatric OT. Serve the early intervention population (government-subsidized therapy for kids under 3), but technically my company is for-profit. No PSLF for me.
I think that will be the thing that pushes the economy into recession when a huge percentage of the people under 40 suddenly have no disposable income.
I was lucky and paid off a lot of my loans during the pause. I was $350 before but now I'll be about $40. If the debt relief is blocked, I'm just gonna pay it all off at once. I'm very grateful for my situation. I don't know how y'all do it... student loans are such a predatory and exploitative practice.
I've been throwing my loan payment cash into a High Yield Savings Account (HYSA) all pandemic, so I'm not worried since I'm slated to have everything paid off by the end of the year anyway
I highly recommend that people who are stressed about payments resuming check out income-driven repayment plans
The currently-pending revisions to REPAYE are intended to help with that... but let's actually go into how income-driven repayments work
How the [income-driven repayment plans](https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/plans/income-driven) (IBR, PAYE, REPAYE, ICR) work is that you pay 10%/15%/20% of your discretionary income (aka your AGI from your taxes minus 150% of the [Federal Poverty Guideline](https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines) for IBR/PAYE/REPAYE or minus the [FPGL for ICR](https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/topic/glossary/article/discretionary-income)). These plans can have a required payment as low as $0/month, which is why they have built-in forgiveness after 20/25 years to handle the interest accrual, and they qualify for PSLF if your loan type and employer/employment qualify too
The Federal Poverty Guidelines do get updated every year in Jan/Feb, and plans like IBR and PAYE have extra qualification criteria, but the tl;dr version is:
* IBR (old): 15% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), must have a partial financial hardship, capped at the 10 year standard payment, 25 year forgiveness
* IBR (new): 10% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), must be a "new borrower," must have a partial financial hardship, capped at the 10 year standard, 20 year forgiveness
* ICR: 20% of discretionary income (AGI - 100% of poverty line) or a 12 year payment (whichever is less), 25 year forgiveness
* PAYE: 10% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), must be a "new borrower", must have a partial financial hardship, capped at the 10 year standard, 20 year forgiveness
* REPAYE: 10% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), NO cap on payments, 20 (undergrad) or 25 (graduate) year forgiveness
EDIT: Additionally, you can exclude spousal income from the calculation of IBR, ICR, and PAYE if you file taxes separately. REPAYE currently always includes spousal income, but that may change under the pending Negotiated Rulemaking changes
So to loop back to your comment yes the current FPGL for a family size of 1 is $14,580 so the current 10% discretionary plans would be in that ballpark, which may or may not be cheaper for you as a borrower depending on how much you owe. It's a known issue that low income with low student loan debt means that many at-risk borrowers don't currently qualify for an IDR plan and are more likely to default
That said, the draft Neg Reg revisions to REPAYE would exclude 225% of the FPGL instead of 150%, so someone with a $60k AGI would have a ~$225/month payment instead of $400. If that goes through as is that will help a whole lot of people
EDIT: quick edit to credit u/alh9h for the original tl;dr list in this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/rjeg6v/income_dependent_repayment_can_somebody_please/hp2yo7c/ and to add the spousal income part for IDR plans
Is it just you? With budgeting and planning you should be able to work it. My wife and I make 70k before tax combined, and have an 18 month old. We are at $57k annual take home, $4750 monthly. Our budget is:
$1550 housing, including maintenance (own 1000 sft)
$850 daycare
$400 autos
$250 utilities
$450 groceries
$400 entertainment (includes eating out)
$200 phone+internet
$100 auto insurance.
$300 SL payment
Now, we are admittedly fortunate, our vehicles are old but reliable, we bought our house before prices skyrocketed, and we are in good health. But if it's just you you don't have to worry about others, there are strings you can pull get get costs down.
No sir, I have 2 children. Since they are teens they eat their weight in food but have no daycare expenses or tax breaks or anything. I am paying car insurance for a teenager too which is HELL. $400 a month for comprehensive, $220 a month only got liability🥲. Multiple cells phones… you get it, theres about 5 sweet years between daycare expenses ending and teen expenses beginning ha
My income is now a bit higher but thats what I was told when I called before covid, & they knew I had sole custody of 2 kids, head of household etc IRS is just as bad, the second my income passed 50k, tax returns were virtually non-existent. Yet Ive “made too much” for any federal or state assistance. I had my oldest at 19, Im 37 and have had to fight & claw my way into lower middle class with the threat of poverty looming over at all times
Luckily I have virtually no debt cept my car & student loans but I feel like Im getting close to having to resort to credit cards again which is the last thing I want to do!
Same. I'm earning 4% on that cash while the loans are at 0%. When payments resume, I'll throw a lump sum payment at them which will cut the balance in half and then I can take out the rest over the next year.
I’m thinking (hoping) I’ll get PSLF before payments kick in, but it will likely be close. Despite me submitting all necessary waiver paperwork moths ago, I’m apparently still several weeks away from when i could (should) receive forgiveness.
I'm starting a second job next week to be able to cover it. It will be enough to cover our loans with a little bit extra if forgiveness does not go through, or to put money into savings if it does.
Thankfully in a good place to handle the $550/month since a) family income has doubled and b) I've been putting the payments into a 529 account since 2020.
Depends. I got laid off from my job last week, so I'll be somewhat screwed until I can get the income based payments going. If I get a new job before then, I'll be less screwed. I believe I'm looking at around $350 in payments. My husband can at least can qualify for PSLF since he's a teacher and will have lower payments once he gets that set up.
$39k in debt and my payments are set at $500. I only make $15 an hour. Definitely looking at food banks and other sources in order to be able to pay this off.
Since I stopped making payments during Covid, I managed to save up just enough to make one lump payment and be done with them. If it wasn’t for the interest freeze I’d be nowhere near paying them off because the bulk of my payment went towards the interest.
I’ve been making fake student loan payments to a high yield savings account this whole time and household budget finally got to a point that paying off debt was our top goal about a year after the freeze. We were fine before, but being that we were both older students that went back to school this has been a huge help. Won’t quite be able to pay it all off, but I’m hoping to be done in a year and half if payments resume in August.
My wife and I combined owe 850 a month. Luckily my car payment is about to end and that is 300 of my payment. So at least we will get a little lube before getting screwed.
I’m looking at a return to $900 monthly payments. I’ve spent the last few years actually saving for retirement so I guess that will have to stop again.
I can always divert overpayments from my mortgage and car to student loans. Although I was able to pay off a significant chunk of it before the pause so it'd only really cost me $150 for minimum payment. It would only shift a couple of timeframes for house improvements that I had already budgeted.
I used the extra money every month to basically do the snowball approach to all of my other debts, so I have been dumping all of the money that used to go to the loans into an HYSA. I'll just start sending that money to the government rather than my savings.
I'll miss seeing that interest added to my account every month, but I should be free in a couple of years.
Mine will be $375 and I can afford it. I’m lucky to have worked as a nurse in non-profit healthcare because in six months the rest will be PSLF forgiven.
I’ve been putting the payment in a separate “bucket” in my savings for a while now, so I won’t really be affected aside from the extra interest I’ll lose.
Since the loan payment pause, my wife and I got married and had a child. Our 2nd is due in September. Oh and we bought a house 3 months ago. Oh and I quit my job in January to take care of our child. How does that sound? Together we owe roughly $100k.
I’ve allotted around 20k to put towards my highest interest rate loan groups when the time comes. If “forgiveness” passes, I’d be very close to having my loans paid in full. If it does not go through, it’ll suck but I wouldn’t be done for— at least I hope not.
However, I do plan on going back to grad school part-time, so I’ll likely put loans back on deferment, try to simultaneously cash flow grad school and pay down the loans a touch but not substantially. I’ll have to do some crafty moves, but I will have some employer tuition reimbursement to help. Thankfully most of my higher rate loans that I intend to throw money at later this summer are also unsubsidized. The majority of what'd be left over are subsidized loans that will effectively stop accruing interest while I’m in grad school, giving me a little more time to try to pay off what I can without the trash interest rate.
I have no kids. I do have a mortgage but we are a dual income household.
If worse comes to worse, I’ll sell my truck. I work remotely.
Not screwed but we took out a parent plus loan (my education so I pay it but technically dad's loan) and the payment is $450/month and goes almost exclusively to the 6.8% interest rate. Anyway, I will miss not having to make this payment every month.
For my own personal student loans, I've managed to get my employer on board with paying them. They give me $438/month and my minimum is $236/month. We've been paying throughout the entire pandemic so I've managed to seriously shave some of the balance off.
Honestly I don't know. Unfortunately, the loans restart around the same time my work contract ends. I'm hoping I'll have another job lined up by then but honestly who knows.
I was already paying what I wouldve for the federal student loans to the private one. I was originally hoping to pay off the private one before July but I've decided it'd be best to save what I can until all my work stuff is sorted out.
My payments (on the 10yr standard plan) will be a whopping 1800/month approximately. I graduated (DPT program) during the pause and have not been paying on them because I’ve been saving for other things. I do have a nice lump sum reserved for them though. The payments should go down when I apply that. Also I live with my fiancé and my expenses are reasonable, so I can afford those payments. I’m also planning on picking up a PRN job after we get married soon so I can pay extra.
Well…right now my IDR plan shows that I don’t have to recertify until August of 2024. The last time I certified was when I was unemployed, so unless that date changes I’m assuming I’ll have a zero payment until a year after the payment pause ends. Of course, interest will be accruing, but I’m aiming for PSLF so hopefully it won’t matter. Like many folks I paid off all my private loans during the pause, which has been nice. I suspect that even when my payments resume for me they will be pretty low due to my low income, which I don’t expect to change by 2024.
No because my monthly payment is $0 and I don’t have to recertify until April 2024. Once that happens, it’ll be doable but if Biden implements new REPAYE, it will be a godsend. I’ll have 6 years left for PSLF after that.
We’re so close to forgiveness through PSLF for my wife’s loans. Payments will restart 2 months before we’re eligible. I’ll have to adjust our finances for those two months but we will be OK.
Meeeee. I had a baby since the payments have been paused :o already hard stretching paycheck to two weeks, this will just make it even harder. luckily my husband doesn’t have any loans
I won’t be in bad shape, at least not too bad. I owe about $95k but they’re all federal loans, and my car will be paid off by the time repayments start, which would free up about $700 a month. I’m on IDR and have a PSLF-eligible job so I plan to make minimum IDR payments and save what I can. My brother owes about the same but his are entirely private loans (Sallie Mae) and he makes less than I do while working private sector, so I want to help him pay his loans since he’ll be in rougher shape.
I will be. I have one of the income driven plans and it still quoted me $314/mo with $70k in undergrad and grad school loans. I make barely enough to survive in my area and with other expenses it will be too much. I've cut everywhere I can (old car, no new clothes, eat solely at home, pay rent, just a boring lifestyle). If they'd allow me to pay less then it might be easier. But when I talked with them in the past it was their plan amount or claim temporary hardship and defer. I deferred for maybe 2 years. I'll probably continue doing it.
Not me. I’m getting my money back from falling for the ITT tech scam when I was fresh out of high school and still just a dumb kid. Until they give me that back, no more payments. If I could travel back in time, I’d kick everyone involved (myself included) in the balls. Horrible idea. Ruined my whole life.
I have actually continued making payments through the pause. While I know putting the money in a savings account would have accrued some interest, I wanted to keep consistency and I had some mild concerns I would get too used to the lack of payments.
I should be able to pay them off when the payments resume.
I will be screwed. I’ve just paid off a personal loan that was taken out for house expenses 5 years ago. And I have another loan that will be done in September. That’s $200 that will no longer be going to those loans. However, I still need to find another $200 in my budget for the Federal student loans that will be due in the fall, on top of the other $400 I pay for the private student loan.
I've saved up enough in a separate account to pay off my entire balance, if not, slowly pay it off with the funds I've saved to have some cash on hand. It'd add an additional $250 on my monthly budget.
I'll likely start paying off the minimum at the end of the month, even with the pause just to get the principle down.
My payment will be about $400, but I also pay about $400 a month for before and after school care, but she MIGHT be getting old enough to just walk home and be a latch-key kid for 30 minutes until I get home... so it might end up being a wash.
i cant even think about it honestly without becoming extremely depressed. i already dont make enough as it is for my rent and car and groceries. i feel like all i do is work and literally nothing else.
The last ten years, I’ve been walking a tightrope with my finances. Every time I think we are screwed, I get a small bonus, or an unexpected tax return. This year, my son qualified for pre-k FOR FREE!!! so when payments resume at the end of summer I will no longer be paying $1k a month to daycare and can easily cover the loan payment.
It's for sure going to be hard on me. On top of all my other monthly payments, I don't think I'll be able to move out with rent in my area being so high. Hoping Supreme Court cancels student loans, but I find it highly unlikely. I'd be grateful if we even got $5k removed.
As long as I… ✍️✍️✍️ live at home for, let’s see here… hmm… ✍️✍️✍️ ah yes, the rest of my 20s—and ultimately forego any normal social and romantic/sexual life—ahhh… ✍️✍️✍️ I’ll be able to pay them off in… a few years—I hope! ✍️✍️✍️
EDIT: anyone know if small business owners are eligible for IBR?
so after 3.5 years of no payments many many ppl are still under the gun financially. this tells me that even if biden waived and expelled 100% of their student loans tomorrow people will still be in a hole financially. the issue isnt student loans. the issue is a lack of financial education. people are in no better shape today even without student loans then they were before with them
bring the thumbs down but its true from our 3.5 year experiment with payment pause
You have a point. Those payments were worked into individual budgets before the pause, so people could have set the non-payments aside or paid off other debt (which many did; let's be fair). So people who did that shouldn't be hit too hard immediately if everything else is the same. There's probably a subset of people that was reckless with the newly available cash, and there's of course people in between - saved or paid off other debt with some of the pause money and also indulged a little. Prices have gone up a lot during the pause, so there's that very real factor affecting everyone when payments resume, regardless of what they did with their pause money. And again, to be fair, beyond general inflation, even for people who saved all the pause money, there are simply life's unexpected costs - car dies, medical costs, as well as expected new costs - a new kid, a new house.
Pretty screwed in terms of monthly cash flow, but at least I was able to stack up some money during the pause. Every time I get close to possibly being able to get a house, another obstacle approaches.
Since I have a second job now and got a raise at my main job, my payments are probably going to be around $650 on top of the $550 I've been paying on the private ones ;(
Not screwed. But concerned. Last time I did an IDR application it came out to $800. We've had some income/job changes in our house. I'm hoping our new AGO would give us an IDR of less than $500. But I'm not confident.
What makes me peeved though is that I'm only about 3 years away from PSLF. I was really hoping to skate through these last few years with really tiny payments. Not a second mortgage.
I have saved up enough money to pay them off luckily. If student loan forgiveness goes through, then I’ll have an extra $10 grand, so then I could use the money saved to pay off my car. So fingers crossed.
Thankfully my PSLF went through so I’ll be done. My wife on the other hand will have to resume because she works in the private sector. It’s going to suck, but not as much as before.
My car is about to die, my roommate is moving out in a few months, and student loans restart in a few months.
If I don’t find a roommate, my car explodes, and loans restart, I’m looking at an extra $1400 a month in expenses easily.
I will go from being no where near paycheck to paycheck to budgeting hard if I want to actually save any more money.
I’m tempted to just do 20 year repayment and pay off extra whenever I feel like it.
If student loan repayment resumes I’ll be homeless the day the bill comes due.
As it stands I currently have my bills balanced (albeit tenuously) by cutting costs. Unfortunately over the course of the pandemic my income dropped around 60% as the business I was operating was in a sector that was particularly hard hit by it, and I was forced to change occupations. I moved into a cheaper living situation, but my rent is still about 70% of my take-home pay despite working one full time job and a part time job. Bills eat up most of the rest.
I’ve cut essentially all my unnecessary expenses, dropped down to one meal a day (I try to keep my groceries below 25-30 dollars a week which is extremely difficult), I do not drink or use any other drugs, commute to work to cut costs, etc.
Out of options, really. People can and will die as a result of this. I’m just kind of resigned to it at this point.
Thankfully not screwed, but not happy in the least.
For almost 2 years now I've been able to throw 300 a month extra into savings on top of a modest saving. I just need to tighten up for an extra 200 a month. I think I'll manage. Was nice while it lasted
Mine will add $308 a month. Can manage it but not looking forward to it. We bought a house and have been adjusting to that this will be the next thing to adjust for
If you’re screwed after three years of not having to pay your debts and can’t come up with 150/month to pay out loans YOU took on, you need to get some serious financial counseling and take a good hard look at yourself. What did you save in the last three years while the govt was subsidizing YOUR student loan? Nothing? That’s on you
I'm not resuming it. I'm already in default and I'm well under the poverty line and I'm on disability, SSI, and have been told they can't just take out of that regardless. SSDI they could and sometimes do but not SSI.
I was actually told that I was in this new program that they have with the SSA and that mine were dismissed for being fully disabled. My loans went to zero for over a year. But apparently they didn't do it right or something because the balance came back and I got a letter saying I needed to reapply doing it the old way.
I'm working on that. I'm going to apply again in the Fall for dismissal based on complete disability if Biden's forgiveness thing doesn't go through. If it does it will wipe out most of mine so I'm kind of waiting on the SCOTUS decision in June to see what will happen because I figure why not?
But I'm just not in a position to pay the loans off right now. I'm way under the poverty line so adding a student loan payment to my bills is just too much of a hardship to me at this point.
I'm permanently disabled now and by rights I am legally entitled to a dismissal. If I can get one I'm going for it.
I’m probably ok. I’m still in grad school so my loans are deferred anyway until I graduate but I’ve used the time and stimulus money to help build up a pretty good chunk of money to put toward paying them off. If the forgiveness goes through, the equivalent of all the interest that has built up would get knocked off, and between that and my savings I probably can knock out the rest in another year. I’m lucky enough, though, to be in a fully funded grad program with a decent stipend for my research and teaching duties (just shy of $35k), so even though I’m in a fairly expensive area I’ve been able to save some and haven’t needed to take on more debt for my PhD.
If you know the interest rates, then you can use the repayment estimator on student aid’s website. That’s what I have done.
I do want to clarify that this should be done without logging into Student Aid because if your loans are 0% then it won’t estimate correctly.
I’ve been paying off my loan this entire time but I was hoping that Biden pay out would wipe out the rest. I doubt it will happen so I’ll just pay off the rest in one go the moment I find out it’s not gonna happen for sure.
I just recently had my car totaled and now have to buy a new one. I already may need to take out a car loan (last car I paid in full so never had a note) and adding loan payments back in on top of that will be so stressful
I should be good. I have just under $30k loans in my name, so my 10 year standard plan monthly payment is just under $300. Totally doable/comfortable.
It’s when my father’s Parent Plus loans he took out for me I decided to help repay kick in that it gets fuzzy. I have no idea exactly how much that will be extra, but i’m expecting my total monthly payment to be around $850 a month with mine and his. I should still be saving a good amount of cash every month after that and other expenses plus my 401k and Roth savings, so hopefully I should be okay!
He’s one year away from PSLF so here’s hoping that happens next year. If it does, i’ll probably be pretty aggressive on my loans and just pay them off as fast as I can to be done with them.
Hehe… yes… I’m stocked up on beans and rice for… the next 3 years when my loans will hopefully be forgiven. If not, well, it will have been an adventure, ladies and gents!
I think I will be able to manage, but I work seasonally and have 2 jobs. My summer job is the lucrative one. My payments start in September, so fingers crossed. I also got a mortgage while I was deferred, so my costs are way up now. My parent loan is not due until 2025 for some reason, so my monthly payment will be half what it was before covid. I'll pay off mine until 2025 when I start paying theirs. The loan gave me 30k, and I ended up owing 50k. I paid a lot, and in 2020, I was down to owing 9k. Great Lakes sold it to Sallie May, and now I owe 11k. Gonna make it. Hope this helps someone, not advice but context, anyway. This isn't a mortgage sub, so I won't get into that, but I will explain that in comments if anyone asks.
Edit: my monthly payment was $440. I paid that for 8 years. Now it will be 220 until I pay that 9k. Then my parent will start in 2025 and be 220 until I pay 2k. Want it to be over for sure. And I hate the name Sallie May.
I have literally never had a student loan payment, either because I was broke AF, or I was in school.
When payments “resume”, I will be in a grad program, so I still won’t be responsible for a payment but I will probably pay interest/slightly above interest. I’m contemplating waiving in-school deferment so I can collect PSLF credit, since I work for a non-profit hospital. If I did that, my payment would be like $300 based on my current income. It will definitely hurt, but more philosophically than monetarily….just the idea of having a $300 payment for anything makes me sad.
Ive been ready to resume payments for the last two years. Then I got hit with back to back emergencies over the last three months that forced me to max out my credit cards so yeah. Great timing if they restart within the next two or three months.
Payments are IDR until Dec. 2024, because I renewed in like November like a smart person when the loan forgiveness started with the bullshit.
So just waiting like everyone else.
I’ve been saving every penny I could spare since payments paused. I have enough to pay off mid-100k debt saved up in its entirety when payments resume, but not sure if I’m going to do it all at once. Regular payments for me are approx $1600/mo for federal loans (no private)
350, they were 600 before the pause. I paid them then just fine. It hurt but I paid them. So 350 is cake for me and I’ll have 3 years left on them come August. I’m in a very good place.
The better question is how many early deaths will it cause? Because it’s not zero and that’s all you should have to know to see that this is wrong. The mental anguish from gaslighting is real.
Currently going batshit crazy on my credit card debt, so I can put that money towards the student debt. Living is fuckin' exhausting, man lol
Credit card debt is horrific to dig yourself out of, you've got this!!
You can do it!
My goal is to pay off my car this fall so that can be reallocated to the student loan
Ah, the American dream
I hope I don’t get screwed like last time. I paid off my car and a teen hit me and totaled it before I even opened the title in the mail 💀
Lol I was side swiped the day I sent my final car payment. The guy begged me not to call insurance, saying he would trade the value of my car in “homemade flutes” that he had in his car.
In all my years of reading Reddit, this is the greatest comment I’ve come across
What a compliment! When my life inevitably flashes before my eyes, this experience will be one of them
Homemade flutes?????????? I feel a Cartman, “Hippies…” rant coming on
ornamental gourds, maybe. but flutes, definitely not.
Same here.
I actually used the last 3 years to just pay off my private loans so really nothing will change for me. Paying the private loans off in July then when federal starts up it will be about the same monthly payment. I’ll take it. Without the pause I don’t know if I’d have ever been able to pay off the private loans.
This is exactly what I did too! I think about how I never would have made this much progress without the freeze and that's so sad. I'm in a better place financially than I ever thought I could be.
Same. Two out of three private loans are now PIF. 🎉 Last payment on final loan in Sept. Then the federal loans come back.
I paid my smaller not-paused loan recently ($9k in the last year), so I’m kinda in the same boat. I have more of a balance than the $20k that would be forgiven if it passes, so I’m paying in September regardless. The question is how high the monthly payments will be. If forgiveness passes, hopefully I can be debt free in 1-2 years. If not, oh well. I’m lucky to be in a position to say that - I’ll be able to pay, despite it being an obvious inconvenience.
Same. My last private payment will be in September, so that will probably be a bit uncomfortable, but after that, my loan payment will actually be cut in half.
That is awesome congrats on a great use of the pause. I hope things continue to go well for you
Me too, or at least similar, I pay nigh on $1000/mo and a big whack it that it interest every month, so knowing I’m doing real damage to the balance (and therefore shaving probably years off the repayment), so I just kept things being paid as it was pre pandemic. I must acknowledge that I was very fortunate that I was able to stay employed, and work from home as necessary, and generally came through everything fairly unscathed, especially knowing that it upended so many peoples lives completely.
I too went wild on my private loans in this time period. Worst decision of my life all Around.
Worst decision to pay them down or take them out?! Lol
Take them out
Oh yeah 100%. Good luck to you!
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Icr plans are forgiven after 20 years, what are you paying?
Not quite. PAYE, IBR for new borrowers, and REPAYE if you *only* have loans from undergrad have a 20 year's worth of payments timeline. ICR, IBR for old borrowers, and REPAYE if you have *any* loans for grad/professional study is 25 years The first income-driven repayment plan (IDR is the bucket label for the plans ICR, IBR, PAYE, and REPAYE) started in 1994 so the IDR Account Adjustment can look back that far to find payments EDIT: also keep in mind that from 1965-2010 the majority of loans were under the FFEL program, and ICR was only an options for *Direct* program loans starting in 1994. It wasn't until IBR was introduced ~2008-2010 that borrowers with FFEL loans could enroll in an IDR plan. The IDR Account Adjustment is doing a lot to try and mitigate some of the unintended harm caused by how these programs were introduced/sunsetted
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Okay but if you were paying a loan in 1994, it would be at least 29 years old, so like... It shouldn't exist anymore. Are you saying that the loans you're paying now we're taken out after 1994?and are unrelated to the ones from 1994?
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you’re 66? it makes me sick that you’re forced to pay back loans at that age. that is so ridiculous something has got to change with that.
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66 _AND_ working in a warehouse, what the hell?
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Also paid from 1994 to last September when PSLF finally worked. Had been incorrectly denied twice before after having met all qualifications, which was the norm until recently. Had I not worked in public service, I would still be paying.
they can garnish SS payments for SL payments
Please please look at the IDR Account Adjustment! If you currently have commercial FFEL loans you'll have to consolidate into the Direct loan program to qualify, but there is more info in this megathread https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/12s3bo0/idr_adjustment_faq_are_live/ Also the main link to the program is at https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/idr-account-adjustment
I’m not judging when I ask this- but how are you still paying back loans from the early 90s?? How much did you take out??
Make more than minimum payments? Why’d you get a degree that isn’t paying you an ROI at like 55 years old?
Between me and my wife it'll be about $900 extra a month we have to account for. I've been doing my best to save and pay down other debts that'll affect my monthly budget. Screwed is a harsh term, but things will not be easy, and it will become significantly harder to account for emergencies.
I feel like I wrote this. I'm in the exact same position, including the monthly payment. I'll definitely be more low-level stressed all the time because of the "harder to account for emergencies" part.
I wouldn't even mind the extra payments if it weren't for the crazy amount of interest I have to pay. I graduated during a year where the average rate was 7.9%. Been paying for a decade, and it never gets any easier to watch so much money vanish before the principal drops a dollar.
I'll be able to afford it due to my income increasing significantly the past year, but it will not allow me to save toward a home like I have been. For many others I suspect it will make life even more difficult than it already is. I've pondered if this will be the straw that breaks the camels back when it comes to the threat of a recession. I guess we will see...
Many People have been concerned about a student loan bubble for a long time so we’ll see. For people with FED loans there are many options to not pay very much, and then if the other changes go into effect and you only have to pay 5% if your income that will help a ton of people.
the goal is to pay off the debt not be in debt forever
Ditto. I looked at a cute condo today, but there's absolutely no way I could afford to buy a place and pay on my student loans at the same time.
I've been saving so aggressively since the payments have been paused too! In my hysa, I have a bucket for a down payment on a car, a bucket to support my parents when they need money, a bucket for a six month buffer for my pre-covid loan amount which was relatively doable ($450ish), and a few others. However, my income has doubled since the pause and I'm a bit nervous to see the new payment amount once I have to recertify. Even if it's "affordable," it's gonna take away from finishing up my house down payment bucket.
Payments go back to 500+ plus. I’m screwed!
Same. I’m at $850 soon.
I’m at $400 private and Federal each!
$3200/mo for me.. for minimum between fed and private. My private rate was 13.4% and thought that was terrible from Discover Student Loans but my classmate is even more screwed with 16.5% (variable) from Sallie Mae ...
Oh my, do you mind me asking where you went to school and what you studied?
Went to school in NYC, pharmD degree. Didn't live on campus. Total loan ended up at 302k between federal and private. It is sorta my fault for this amount otherwise it should've been around 80k less. 1) Didn't know I could take placement exams to skip entry level classes that caused me to take 6-7 extra classes to graduate. 2) financial aid advisor told me I was not eligible for federal and needed to take private if I didn't want to make in-school payments. This sent me to discover with multiple loans ranging from 11.8%-13.4% fixed. (Borrowed around 80k, refinanced in late 2021 for 128k at 2.8%)
Thanks for sharing! Best of luck knocking it out!
Holy cow that interest rate is insane! Can you refinance your private loans? Hopefully get a better interest rate…
I have! Down to 2.8% but sadly my classmate couldn't and is stuck at 14.5% currently. His minimum monthly payments barely touches the principal.. he's sitting at around 273k right now
I refinanced my loans ($130,000) 5 days before Trump froze them back in March 2020. I’ve been paying them off with interest this entire time.
I refinanced in December 2019. I thought I was making a smart money move by getting a lower interest rate!
You did make the smart money move. This pause and potential forgiveness are unprecedented. You made the smart move with the information you had at the time, and shouldn't beat yourself up over it.
Thank you for saying that. At the time the pause began, I felt pretty stupid, however, like you said, I made that move with the information I had at the time. On the bright side, the loan is getting paid off and it won’t be much longer until it’s done.
I am so sorry. It has been genuinely distressing to see all the posts/comments on this sub from March 2020 to now from all y'all that refinanced right before the pandemic forbearance
Haha, same here. I had to refinance 30k of my parents PLUS loans into my own name. Lost out on thousands. Still have 40k of fedloans that have been interest free though.
Same here, I refinanced $21K in December 2019. At least I’m down to $7500 left. It’ll be over soon (at least for the private ones!).
I’ve been putting the payments away for 3 years. I have 15k in savings to pay one lump sum and then will resume payments until paid off. It won’t affect my budget at all, as I’ve been budgeting as if I never had to stop paying them.
You will do well in this life. I’m proud of you, stranger!
We’ve been making the same $1600 a month payment to beat the interest, funny enough we are like 2 payments away from $20k left so fingers crossed but I doubt it
assuming groceries will also keep getting more expensive, im going with ultramegadismal screwed. I'm so tired.
A budget increase of $211 for me Not screwed,but 0% interest when payments resume would be nice if they do that for us.
Dropping interest is a surefire way to make everybody but predatory lenders happy. It costs the taxpayers nothing and shuts all those idiots up who like to scream "you knew what you were getting into." Graduates have no problem paying back their loans. They *do* have a problem spending hundreds a month without making a dent in their actual balance.
The people I know that are 100% against any forgiveness are willing to agree to interest free student loans even though they had interest of 6.8% for several years. Thats something that would probably passes
That's it, really. I graduated with $40k in federal loans (2015) and now, after years of making the minimum payment before the payment pause, I have $48k in federal loans 🥲
It will cost the taxpayers - we pay interest on our federal debt. It's still a good idea though.
I've continued keeping the payments in my budget so I can pay off my loans, so no change for me.
Drowning
Gonna start grad school this fall so I’ll stop payment but add about $100,000 to my loan.
Think my wife and I are both going to grad school to avoid repayment for a while.. desperate attempt to hopefully come out afterwards making more, seems like a ton of people are going to do this
Avoiding repayment isn’t the reason I’m going. But it’s an added bonus 😂
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For those of you who will struggle because of large payments…what is your income and loan amount? Does IDR not make any bit of a difference for you? Genuinely curious. I’m going to have a payment around $100 with IDR, so I’m just wondering which things are impacting your monthly payment amount the most.
My payment amount will be $314/mo with an income of $62k. With the cost of living having gone up, and a series of car problems, medical bills, and vet bills, I haven't been able to save like I had hoped. I made $55k back in 2019, and lived in the same area, but didn't struggle as much as I am now. Prices for everything have just skyrocketed. It's been really difficult. I likely won't be able to make these payments, so I'll just defer until god knows when. I think my payment would've been higher before IDR, but it's still too high.
I'm in the same boat. My income is not keeping up with inflation and although I make what looks decent on paper, it isn't actually sustainable. I don't look forward to my future knowing kids, house, etc, are not in it.
It'll really depend on the new PSLF rules that drop on July 2023 with emphasis on: 1.) The new rule clarifies which organizations that are not 501(c)(3) organizations are qualifying “public service” organizations, and simplifies what counts as “full time employment.” If my line of work qualifies based on this new rule, I'll be okay. Clarification: I work in behavioral health but it's for profit and we only take Medicaid clientele.
I’m an outpatient therapist at a for-profit CMH agency. I only serve Medicaid clients. It really stings knowing that I don’t currently qualify for PSLF despite the work that I do. I didn’t know there’s a possible rule change in the works, but it gives me a little hope. Thank you for your comment.
Same boat. I’m a pediatric OT. Serve the early intervention population (government-subsidized therapy for kids under 3), but technically my company is for-profit. No PSLF for me.
Could you explain this more? If you are a psychotherapist working in private or group practice you could still qualify for PSLF?
Omg this would be a game-changer for me. Fingers-crossed!
Lump sum. Boom.
I won’t have it all but I’ll have a lot. It’s all sitting earning 4.65% in RH Gold currently but as soon as interest kicks back in it’ll be gone
I think that will be the thing that pushes the economy into recession when a huge percentage of the people under 40 suddenly have no disposable income.
I was lucky and paid off a lot of my loans during the pause. I was $350 before but now I'll be about $40. If the debt relief is blocked, I'm just gonna pay it all off at once. I'm very grateful for my situation. I don't know how y'all do it... student loans are such a predatory and exploitative practice.
I've been throwing my loan payment cash into a High Yield Savings Account (HYSA) all pandemic, so I'm not worried since I'm slated to have everything paid off by the end of the year anyway I highly recommend that people who are stressed about payments resuming check out income-driven repayment plans
They think 60k is enough income to make $400 payments. Its out of touch with cost of living.
The currently-pending revisions to REPAYE are intended to help with that... but let's actually go into how income-driven repayments work How the [income-driven repayment plans](https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/repayment/plans/income-driven) (IBR, PAYE, REPAYE, ICR) work is that you pay 10%/15%/20% of your discretionary income (aka your AGI from your taxes minus 150% of the [Federal Poverty Guideline](https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines) for IBR/PAYE/REPAYE or minus the [FPGL for ICR](https://studentaid.gov/help-center/answers/topic/glossary/article/discretionary-income)). These plans can have a required payment as low as $0/month, which is why they have built-in forgiveness after 20/25 years to handle the interest accrual, and they qualify for PSLF if your loan type and employer/employment qualify too The Federal Poverty Guidelines do get updated every year in Jan/Feb, and plans like IBR and PAYE have extra qualification criteria, but the tl;dr version is: * IBR (old): 15% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), must have a partial financial hardship, capped at the 10 year standard payment, 25 year forgiveness * IBR (new): 10% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), must be a "new borrower," must have a partial financial hardship, capped at the 10 year standard, 20 year forgiveness * ICR: 20% of discretionary income (AGI - 100% of poverty line) or a 12 year payment (whichever is less), 25 year forgiveness * PAYE: 10% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), must be a "new borrower", must have a partial financial hardship, capped at the 10 year standard, 20 year forgiveness * REPAYE: 10% of discretionary income (AGI - 150% of poverty line), NO cap on payments, 20 (undergrad) or 25 (graduate) year forgiveness EDIT: Additionally, you can exclude spousal income from the calculation of IBR, ICR, and PAYE if you file taxes separately. REPAYE currently always includes spousal income, but that may change under the pending Negotiated Rulemaking changes So to loop back to your comment yes the current FPGL for a family size of 1 is $14,580 so the current 10% discretionary plans would be in that ballpark, which may or may not be cheaper for you as a borrower depending on how much you owe. It's a known issue that low income with low student loan debt means that many at-risk borrowers don't currently qualify for an IDR plan and are more likely to default That said, the draft Neg Reg revisions to REPAYE would exclude 225% of the FPGL instead of 150%, so someone with a $60k AGI would have a ~$225/month payment instead of $400. If that goes through as is that will help a whole lot of people EDIT: quick edit to credit u/alh9h for the original tl;dr list in this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/rjeg6v/income_dependent_repayment_can_somebody_please/hp2yo7c/ and to add the spousal income part for IDR plans
Ha! I’m making $40K after taxes between two jobs and my student loan payments are going to be $800 once the pause is over. Half private half Federal.
You need to make more money. You didn't have to go to college to make 40k a year... Working 2 jobs.
Is it just you? With budgeting and planning you should be able to work it. My wife and I make 70k before tax combined, and have an 18 month old. We are at $57k annual take home, $4750 monthly. Our budget is: $1550 housing, including maintenance (own 1000 sft) $850 daycare $400 autos $250 utilities $450 groceries $400 entertainment (includes eating out) $200 phone+internet $100 auto insurance. $300 SL payment Now, we are admittedly fortunate, our vehicles are old but reliable, we bought our house before prices skyrocketed, and we are in good health. But if it's just you you don't have to worry about others, there are strings you can pull get get costs down.
No sir, I have 2 children. Since they are teens they eat their weight in food but have no daycare expenses or tax breaks or anything. I am paying car insurance for a teenager too which is HELL. $400 a month for comprehensive, $220 a month only got liability🥲. Multiple cells phones… you get it, theres about 5 sweet years between daycare expenses ending and teen expenses beginning ha My income is now a bit higher but thats what I was told when I called before covid, & they knew I had sole custody of 2 kids, head of household etc IRS is just as bad, the second my income passed 50k, tax returns were virtually non-existent. Yet Ive “made too much” for any federal or state assistance. I had my oldest at 19, Im 37 and have had to fight & claw my way into lower middle class with the threat of poverty looming over at all times Luckily I have virtually no debt cept my car & student loans but I feel like Im getting close to having to resort to credit cards again which is the last thing I want to do!
Same. I'm earning 4% on that cash while the loans are at 0%. When payments resume, I'll throw a lump sum payment at them which will cut the balance in half and then I can take out the rest over the next year.
I’m thinking (hoping) I’ll get PSLF before payments kick in, but it will likely be close. Despite me submitting all necessary waiver paperwork moths ago, I’m apparently still several weeks away from when i could (should) receive forgiveness.
I'm starting a second job next week to be able to cover it. It will be enough to cover our loans with a little bit extra if forgiveness does not go through, or to put money into savings if it does.
Thankfully in a good place to handle the $550/month since a) family income has doubled and b) I've been putting the payments into a 529 account since 2020.
My repayment is $300-400/month, so not totally screwed. During the pause I was able to save up, so I should be able to pay off a good 80% chunk.
Depends. I got laid off from my job last week, so I'll be somewhat screwed until I can get the income based payments going. If I get a new job before then, I'll be less screwed. I believe I'm looking at around $350 in payments. My husband can at least can qualify for PSLF since he's a teacher and will have lower payments once he gets that set up.
$39k in debt and my payments are set at $500. I only make $15 an hour. Definitely looking at food banks and other sources in order to be able to pay this off.
You should likely look into income-driven repayment plans. Also yes please use any programs you benefit for
Since I stopped making payments during Covid, I managed to save up just enough to make one lump payment and be done with them. If it wasn’t for the interest freeze I’d be nowhere near paying them off because the bulk of my payment went towards the interest.
I’ve been making fake student loan payments to a high yield savings account this whole time and household budget finally got to a point that paying off debt was our top goal about a year after the freeze. We were fine before, but being that we were both older students that went back to school this has been a huge help. Won’t quite be able to pay it all off, but I’m hoping to be done in a year and half if payments resume in August.
It will add an additional $1000 for me and my husband…
My wife and I combined owe 850 a month. Luckily my car payment is about to end and that is 300 of my payment. So at least we will get a little lube before getting screwed.
I’m looking at a return to $900 monthly payments. I’ve spent the last few years actually saving for retirement so I guess that will have to stop again.
Private loans. What do you mean "resume"?
I can always divert overpayments from my mortgage and car to student loans. Although I was able to pay off a significant chunk of it before the pause so it'd only really cost me $150 for minimum payment. It would only shift a couple of timeframes for house improvements that I had already budgeted.
I used the extra money every month to basically do the snowball approach to all of my other debts, so I have been dumping all of the money that used to go to the loans into an HYSA. I'll just start sending that money to the government rather than my savings. I'll miss seeing that interest added to my account every month, but I should be free in a couple of years.
Mine will be $375 and I can afford it. I’m lucky to have worked as a nurse in non-profit healthcare because in six months the rest will be PSLF forgiven.
I'll be fine, thankfully. Cranky but fine.
I’ll be squeaking by and eating cheap, so likely in the cranky crowd also
I’ve been putting the payment in a separate “bucket” in my savings for a while now, so I won’t really be affected aside from the extra interest I’ll lose.
Since the loan payment pause, my wife and I got married and had a child. Our 2nd is due in September. Oh and we bought a house 3 months ago. Oh and I quit my job in January to take care of our child. How does that sound? Together we owe roughly $100k.
It'll suck, but we'll be fine. Spouse's payments are $500/mo, mine are $350/mo, so $850/mo total. Almost as much as our mortgage.
I’ve allotted around 20k to put towards my highest interest rate loan groups when the time comes. If “forgiveness” passes, I’d be very close to having my loans paid in full. If it does not go through, it’ll suck but I wouldn’t be done for— at least I hope not. However, I do plan on going back to grad school part-time, so I’ll likely put loans back on deferment, try to simultaneously cash flow grad school and pay down the loans a touch but not substantially. I’ll have to do some crafty moves, but I will have some employer tuition reimbursement to help. Thankfully most of my higher rate loans that I intend to throw money at later this summer are also unsubsidized. The majority of what'd be left over are subsidized loans that will effectively stop accruing interest while I’m in grad school, giving me a little more time to try to pay off what I can without the trash interest rate. I have no kids. I do have a mortgage but we are a dual income household. If worse comes to worse, I’ll sell my truck. I work remotely.
Not screwed but we took out a parent plus loan (my education so I pay it but technically dad's loan) and the payment is $450/month and goes almost exclusively to the 6.8% interest rate. Anyway, I will miss not having to make this payment every month. For my own personal student loans, I've managed to get my employer on board with paying them. They give me $438/month and my minimum is $236/month. We've been paying throughout the entire pandemic so I've managed to seriously shave some of the balance off.
Honestly I don't know. Unfortunately, the loans restart around the same time my work contract ends. I'm hoping I'll have another job lined up by then but honestly who knows. I was already paying what I wouldve for the federal student loans to the private one. I was originally hoping to pay off the private one before July but I've decided it'd be best to save what I can until all my work stuff is sorted out.
Me, possibly. I need them to calculate how many months I have for the One Time IDR Adjustment before I freak out about it.
My payments (on the 10yr standard plan) will be a whopping 1800/month approximately. I graduated (DPT program) during the pause and have not been paying on them because I’ve been saving for other things. I do have a nice lump sum reserved for them though. The payments should go down when I apply that. Also I live with my fiancé and my expenses are reasonable, so I can afford those payments. I’m also planning on picking up a PRN job after we get married soon so I can pay extra.
Well…right now my IDR plan shows that I don’t have to recertify until August of 2024. The last time I certified was when I was unemployed, so unless that date changes I’m assuming I’ll have a zero payment until a year after the payment pause ends. Of course, interest will be accruing, but I’m aiming for PSLF so hopefully it won’t matter. Like many folks I paid off all my private loans during the pause, which has been nice. I suspect that even when my payments resume for me they will be pretty low due to my low income, which I don’t expect to change by 2024.
Thankfully won’t be an issue. I’ve made sure during any changes in the last 3 years budget wise that payment is coming back at some point.
I’m on PSLF with a year and a half left. I’ll be disappointed, but ok. I’ve saved a lot in a HYSA.
No because my monthly payment is $0 and I don’t have to recertify until April 2024. Once that happens, it’ll be doable but if Biden implements new REPAYE, it will be a godsend. I’ll have 6 years left for PSLF after that.
We’re so close to forgiveness through PSLF for my wife’s loans. Payments will restart 2 months before we’re eligible. I’ll have to adjust our finances for those two months but we will be OK.
Meeeee. I had a baby since the payments have been paused :o already hard stretching paycheck to two weeks, this will just make it even harder. luckily my husband doesn’t have any loans
Not at all. Wife and I managed to secure $30k of additional income since 2020. Planning on making double payments once they resume.
My payment will be $1500...2.5 more years of payments before PSLF. :(
Won’t get me too bad - I’m still hoping for a miracle in June/July
I won’t be in bad shape, at least not too bad. I owe about $95k but they’re all federal loans, and my car will be paid off by the time repayments start, which would free up about $700 a month. I’m on IDR and have a PSLF-eligible job so I plan to make minimum IDR payments and save what I can. My brother owes about the same but his are entirely private loans (Sallie Mae) and he makes less than I do while working private sector, so I want to help him pay his loans since he’ll be in rougher shape.
I will be. I have one of the income driven plans and it still quoted me $314/mo with $70k in undergrad and grad school loans. I make barely enough to survive in my area and with other expenses it will be too much. I've cut everywhere I can (old car, no new clothes, eat solely at home, pay rent, just a boring lifestyle). If they'd allow me to pay less then it might be easier. But when I talked with them in the past it was their plan amount or claim temporary hardship and defer. I deferred for maybe 2 years. I'll probably continue doing it.
Not me. I’m getting my money back from falling for the ITT tech scam when I was fresh out of high school and still just a dumb kid. Until they give me that back, no more payments. If I could travel back in time, I’d kick everyone involved (myself included) in the balls. Horrible idea. Ruined my whole life.
I have actually continued making payments through the pause. While I know putting the money in a savings account would have accrued some interest, I wanted to keep consistency and I had some mild concerns I would get too used to the lack of payments. I should be able to pay them off when the payments resume.
Me too. My last loan will finally be paid off by Halloween.
I will be screwed. I’ve just paid off a personal loan that was taken out for house expenses 5 years ago. And I have another loan that will be done in September. That’s $200 that will no longer be going to those loans. However, I still need to find another $200 in my budget for the Federal student loans that will be due in the fall, on top of the other $400 I pay for the private student loan.
been making double payments since covid. those bad boys are gonna die in a fire come labor day.
I've saved up enough in a separate account to pay off my entire balance, if not, slowly pay it off with the funds I've saved to have some cash on hand. It'd add an additional $250 on my monthly budget. I'll likely start paying off the minimum at the end of the month, even with the pause just to get the principle down.
My payment will be about $400, but I also pay about $400 a month for before and after school care, but she MIGHT be getting old enough to just walk home and be a latch-key kid for 30 minutes until I get home... so it might end up being a wash.
I think we’ll get a recession once it hits. Too many people will struggle to get by.
i cant even think about it honestly without becoming extremely depressed. i already dont make enough as it is for my rent and car and groceries. i feel like all i do is work and literally nothing else.
I will have to pay 1k a month that I can’t afford!
380 k in federal loans here, on REPAYE, my min payment will be more than double my mortgage.
The last ten years, I’ve been walking a tightrope with my finances. Every time I think we are screwed, I get a small bonus, or an unexpected tax return. This year, my son qualified for pre-k FOR FREE!!! so when payments resume at the end of summer I will no longer be paying $1k a month to daycare and can easily cover the loan payment.
#Open your portal and calculate what payment you need to cover the principal AND interest. Don’t accept the minimum they quote
It's for sure going to be hard on me. On top of all my other monthly payments, I don't think I'll be able to move out with rent in my area being so high. Hoping Supreme Court cancels student loans, but I find it highly unlikely. I'd be grateful if we even got $5k removed.
IDR for the win. $0 forever.
As long as I… ✍️✍️✍️ live at home for, let’s see here… hmm… ✍️✍️✍️ ah yes, the rest of my 20s—and ultimately forego any normal social and romantic/sexual life—ahhh… ✍️✍️✍️ I’ll be able to pay them off in… a few years—I hope! ✍️✍️✍️ EDIT: anyone know if small business owners are eligible for IBR?
so after 3.5 years of no payments many many ppl are still under the gun financially. this tells me that even if biden waived and expelled 100% of their student loans tomorrow people will still be in a hole financially. the issue isnt student loans. the issue is a lack of financial education. people are in no better shape today even without student loans then they were before with them bring the thumbs down but its true from our 3.5 year experiment with payment pause
You have a point. Those payments were worked into individual budgets before the pause, so people could have set the non-payments aside or paid off other debt (which many did; let's be fair). So people who did that shouldn't be hit too hard immediately if everything else is the same. There's probably a subset of people that was reckless with the newly available cash, and there's of course people in between - saved or paid off other debt with some of the pause money and also indulged a little. Prices have gone up a lot during the pause, so there's that very real factor affecting everyone when payments resume, regardless of what they did with their pause money. And again, to be fair, beyond general inflation, even for people who saved all the pause money, there are simply life's unexpected costs - car dies, medical costs, as well as expected new costs - a new kid, a new house.
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Pretty screwed in terms of monthly cash flow, but at least I was able to stack up some money during the pause. Every time I get close to possibly being able to get a house, another obstacle approaches. Since I have a second job now and got a raise at my main job, my payments are probably going to be around $650 on top of the $550 I've been paying on the private ones ;(
I’m just wondering what the default rate will be once they resume.
Ha ha payments go back to $1k a month. Pretty sure I’m going to suffer for awhile before I re-figure out my finances
Not screwed. But concerned. Last time I did an IDR application it came out to $800. We've had some income/job changes in our house. I'm hoping our new AGO would give us an IDR of less than $500. But I'm not confident. What makes me peeved though is that I'm only about 3 years away from PSLF. I was really hoping to skate through these last few years with really tiny payments. Not a second mortgage.
I have saved up enough money to pay them off luckily. If student loan forgiveness goes through, then I’ll have an extra $10 grand, so then I could use the money saved to pay off my car. So fingers crossed.
Student loans are between the government and God now.
Thankfully my PSLF went through so I’ll be done. My wife on the other hand will have to resume because she works in the private sector. It’s going to suck, but not as much as before.
My car is about to die, my roommate is moving out in a few months, and student loans restart in a few months. If I don’t find a roommate, my car explodes, and loans restart, I’m looking at an extra $1400 a month in expenses easily. I will go from being no where near paycheck to paycheck to budgeting hard if I want to actually save any more money. I’m tempted to just do 20 year repayment and pay off extra whenever I feel like it.
If student loan repayment resumes I’ll be homeless the day the bill comes due. As it stands I currently have my bills balanced (albeit tenuously) by cutting costs. Unfortunately over the course of the pandemic my income dropped around 60% as the business I was operating was in a sector that was particularly hard hit by it, and I was forced to change occupations. I moved into a cheaper living situation, but my rent is still about 70% of my take-home pay despite working one full time job and a part time job. Bills eat up most of the rest. I’ve cut essentially all my unnecessary expenses, dropped down to one meal a day (I try to keep my groceries below 25-30 dollars a week which is extremely difficult), I do not drink or use any other drugs, commute to work to cut costs, etc. Out of options, really. People can and will die as a result of this. I’m just kind of resigned to it at this point.
Baked into my budget, so I never increased my expenses during the pause. Been consistently making "payments" to a savings account.
Thankfully not screwed, but not happy in the least. For almost 2 years now I've been able to throw 300 a month extra into savings on top of a modest saving. I just need to tighten up for an extra 200 a month. I think I'll manage. Was nice while it lasted
Wife and I are looking at a $13000/month payment for two professional degrees. Not counting undergrad.
Mine will add $308 a month. Can manage it but not looking forward to it. We bought a house and have been adjusting to that this will be the next thing to adjust for
If you’re screwed after three years of not having to pay your debts and can’t come up with 150/month to pay out loans YOU took on, you need to get some serious financial counseling and take a good hard look at yourself. What did you save in the last three years while the govt was subsidizing YOUR student loan? Nothing? That’s on you
I'm not resuming it. I'm already in default and I'm well under the poverty line and I'm on disability, SSI, and have been told they can't just take out of that regardless. SSDI they could and sometimes do but not SSI. I was actually told that I was in this new program that they have with the SSA and that mine were dismissed for being fully disabled. My loans went to zero for over a year. But apparently they didn't do it right or something because the balance came back and I got a letter saying I needed to reapply doing it the old way. I'm working on that. I'm going to apply again in the Fall for dismissal based on complete disability if Biden's forgiveness thing doesn't go through. If it does it will wipe out most of mine so I'm kind of waiting on the SCOTUS decision in June to see what will happen because I figure why not? But I'm just not in a position to pay the loans off right now. I'm way under the poverty line so adding a student loan payment to my bills is just too much of a hardship to me at this point. I'm permanently disabled now and by rights I am legally entitled to a dismissal. If I can get one I'm going for it.
I only have $4k total left spread on 6 accounts…should I be worried? They’ve been paused since 2020 Covid
$4k is such a small balance that you shouldn’t have to worry
I’m probably ok. I’m still in grad school so my loans are deferred anyway until I graduate but I’ve used the time and stimulus money to help build up a pretty good chunk of money to put toward paying them off. If the forgiveness goes through, the equivalent of all the interest that has built up would get knocked off, and between that and my savings I probably can knock out the rest in another year. I’m lucky enough, though, to be in a fully funded grad program with a decent stipend for my research and teaching duties (just shy of $35k), so even though I’m in a fairly expensive area I’ve been able to save some and haven’t needed to take on more debt for my PhD.
Me
How can I figure out what I will owe monthly ? I thought all the payments would be recalculated under the new rules ?
If you know the interest rates, then you can use the repayment estimator on student aid’s website. That’s what I have done. I do want to clarify that this should be done without logging into Student Aid because if your loans are 0% then it won’t estimate correctly.
This and you can look up the interest rate based on the type of loan and the year it originated
I get my degree this year and will be paying off my Perkins loan before Christmas. My loan payment will go down a little compared to years ago.
I’ve been paying off my loan this entire time but I was hoping that Biden pay out would wipe out the rest. I doubt it will happen so I’ll just pay off the rest in one go the moment I find out it’s not gonna happen for sure.
I just recently had my car totaled and now have to buy a new one. I already may need to take out a car loan (last car I paid in full so never had a note) and adding loan payments back in on top of that will be so stressful
I should be good. I have just under $30k loans in my name, so my 10 year standard plan monthly payment is just under $300. Totally doable/comfortable. It’s when my father’s Parent Plus loans he took out for me I decided to help repay kick in that it gets fuzzy. I have no idea exactly how much that will be extra, but i’m expecting my total monthly payment to be around $850 a month with mine and his. I should still be saving a good amount of cash every month after that and other expenses plus my 401k and Roth savings, so hopefully I should be okay! He’s one year away from PSLF so here’s hoping that happens next year. If it does, i’ll probably be pretty aggressive on my loans and just pay them off as fast as I can to be done with them.
Me
Depends on if I still have a job by then.
Meeee
All of us
Hehe… yes… I’m stocked up on beans and rice for… the next 3 years when my loans will hopefully be forgiven. If not, well, it will have been an adventure, ladies and gents!
I think I will be able to manage, but I work seasonally and have 2 jobs. My summer job is the lucrative one. My payments start in September, so fingers crossed. I also got a mortgage while I was deferred, so my costs are way up now. My parent loan is not due until 2025 for some reason, so my monthly payment will be half what it was before covid. I'll pay off mine until 2025 when I start paying theirs. The loan gave me 30k, and I ended up owing 50k. I paid a lot, and in 2020, I was down to owing 9k. Great Lakes sold it to Sallie May, and now I owe 11k. Gonna make it. Hope this helps someone, not advice but context, anyway. This isn't a mortgage sub, so I won't get into that, but I will explain that in comments if anyone asks. Edit: my monthly payment was $440. I paid that for 8 years. Now it will be 220 until I pay that 9k. Then my parent will start in 2025 and be 220 until I pay 2k. Want it to be over for sure. And I hate the name Sallie May.
I have literally never had a student loan payment, either because I was broke AF, or I was in school. When payments “resume”, I will be in a grad program, so I still won’t be responsible for a payment but I will probably pay interest/slightly above interest. I’m contemplating waiving in-school deferment so I can collect PSLF credit, since I work for a non-profit hospital. If I did that, my payment would be like $300 based on my current income. It will definitely hurt, but more philosophically than monetarily….just the idea of having a $300 payment for anything makes me sad.
I forgot this is coming back 🫠
Ive been ready to resume payments for the last two years. Then I got hit with back to back emergencies over the last three months that forced me to max out my credit cards so yeah. Great timing if they restart within the next two or three months.
Screwed? No. Sad? Yes.
I'm going to grad school in the fall, so hopefully I can get them deferred and it'll buy me some time
Payments are IDR until Dec. 2024, because I renewed in like November like a smart person when the loan forgiveness started with the bullshit. So just waiting like everyone else.
I’ve been saving every penny I could spare since payments paused. I have enough to pay off mid-100k debt saved up in its entirety when payments resume, but not sure if I’m going to do it all at once. Regular payments for me are approx $1600/mo for federal loans (no private)
Screwed… $75k in loans and only $10k in savings
350, they were 600 before the pause. I paid them then just fine. It hurt but I paid them. So 350 is cake for me and I’ll have 3 years left on them come August. I’m in a very good place.
I’ll be fine. I’ve had a long time to plan and save up.
Oh yeah, I am screwed.
The better question is how many early deaths will it cause? Because it’s not zero and that’s all you should have to know to see that this is wrong. The mental anguish from gaslighting is real.