Money Doesn't Grow on Trees

Money Does Not Grow on Trees - It has now been over one month since my student loans entered repayment.  One month of numerous letters, emails, and telephone calls.  The letters arrived first to remind me of my upcoming payments.  Then the emails began and finally telephone calls.

     In reply, I have sent mail to all of my lenders and I have called them.  As I have stated in earlier posts, my lenders are unwilling to make different repayment schedules based on my financial situation.  That is, with the exception of my federal loans.
     My federal loans account for approximately $33,000 of my student loan debt.  Therefore, they represent about 25 percent of my total debt.  $33,000 is by no means a small amount and so I applied for Income-based Repayment.  I applied about a month ago through the Department of Education’s website and Nelnet.  It was a simple process that took approximately 15

minutes to complete.  Income-based repayment, or IBR, uses tax information from the IRS to determine how much money is owed per month.  Since I had current IRS information, a lot of work was streamlined.

     The decision has now been made regarding my application.  I found out this past week that I qualify for the IBR plan.  Five loans are under the plan, which amounts to $26,800.  Since I qualify, my monthly payments have been reduced from $304.55 to $0.  Yes, zero dollars.  The reason for that is because of my total debt to income ratio.  Although I wanted to qualify, I was unsure if I would.  Now that I have, it’s a good start to my student loan debt.

     By saving the $304.55 per month, my income almost covers my private loan debt.  However, I am still in the red by about $100 per month.

     Now that I know I qualify for the Federal guidelines of the IBR plan, it reaffirms my commitment in seeing new repayment plans for private loans.  If private lenders adopted a similar plan to IBR, student loan debt would be manageable.

     I am thankful for the Federal repayment plans and am hopeful that they will one day extend to all student loans.  After all, Money Doesn't Grow on Trees.

Description: Money Doesn't Grow on Trees
Rating: 5
Reviewer: Unknown
ItemReviewed: Money Doesn't Grow on Trees