My partner and I have about 60k in student loans and haven’t been paying even though they started back in October. I’m waiting to see if maybe we just shouldn’t. I remember there being chatter about how Nelnet and other loan holders had like laid off a bunch of people during the pause and hadn’t hired them back, and the system is overloaded and fucked, and how are people suddenly going to pay a big monthly expense anyway, etc etc. But if people were to not pay them, I feel like the media would not want to perpetuate that narrative and build it into something real by spreading the word so to speak. So I don’t know if there’s a way to gauge is people are actually paying them? Does anyone know?
I slapped it on the IDR thing and I'm just gonna ignore it forever.
I'm maybe gonna move out of the country and then just ignore them forever.
I haven’t been paying them. I didn’t even realize they started back up. I’m guessing a lot of people are doing the same, which is great.
I have no idea what’s going on. Nelnet says my required payment is zero but we should have restarted payments. I think they’re just racking up interest right now to fuck us over idk
No. If you're on IDR, it's very possible to have zero dollar payments, depending on your income (which is cool, obvs, because you pay nothing and theres no increasing of the principle and you constructively are counted as having made payments).
I’m good the website was just weird and for some reason they do the withdrawal at the end of the month instead of the first
I was just doing the Elon thing, but glad you figured it.
Have you thoroughly checked the email they use for you for a forgiveness message? We were surprised to get one for my husband this past fall, but when we last logged in to check his loans, it showed the same status you're describing.
The forgiveness on it is wonky. There are different income groups where you only have to pay X% of your monthly statement and the rest of that month is forgiven. Maybe you technically owe $300 a month, but your payment is $15 and the other $285 is forgiven each month. The lowest income group has a monthly payment rate of $0 with the rest forgiven. It's incredibly convoluted and stupid, but it was intentionally designed so that only the wealthiest/biggest morons actually pay the full amount.
I got a good income based repayment plan and I’m only paying $100/month on six figures of debt. I work in the public sector so it should be all forgiven in 10 years. I need my credit to not be dogshit so I can buy a car when my current one breaks. So yeah. That $100/month is basically a protection racket on my ability to get to work.
If I remember correctly, those are the only loans that can garnish your wages. If absolutely nothing else, I would just pay them one month, not pay them for three months, pay them again, and then continue that cycle.
My country has zero interest on them (for now, before more neolib policies encroach on that system), I haven't paid back a cent because I'm too broke to pay it back atm.
I regretfully resumed payments, but only because I'm very close to the 20-year end-of-plan thing with IDR/IBR. If it gets forgiven this year, then I won't have to pay taxes on the forgiven portion as income, which would be great.
And if it doesn't get forgiven this year, then idk what I'll do. Count how many payments to forgiveness versus how much it'll fuck me on taxes and figure out what's the best way to go, I guess.
I started paying my public loans back. I hope they eventually allow some portion of student loan forgiveness, but on the off chance they aren't, there's no way I'm dealing with wage garnishing.
yeah i paid my off in full just the other day. feels fucking amazing
Death to America
Congrats, i dont know how people exist and not obsess over getting rid of them
You should get on IDR and make payments. If your income is low enough, you won't have to pay anything, and even if it's a bit higher than that, you're payments should be manageable.
I think my wife's student loan has like 1,75% interest on it, so it's not a huge amount, but it does represent another debt that we need to get rid of. We also just got an interest rate increase on our car, which means that any available income we have is going towards paying that off as soon as possible. I think so far this past year we have paid an additional 3-4 months off of our loan, and later this month we'll pay another 3.
With the new IDR plan I’m making payments of a whopping $0 a month. I’ve yet to give them a single cent and I hope to never do so.
