What happens after you apply for loan forgiveness?
If you qualify for student loan forgiveness or discharge in full, and have applied if necessary in your case, you will get a notification and will no longer need to make payments. In some cases, you may even get a refund, depending on the program you applied under.
You'll be notified or see a $0 balance
You will receive notification of your loan discharge via email, mail and/or your online loan servicing account (depending how your communication preferences are set). It will also be reflected when you log in to the Federal Student Aid site using your FSA ID.
Your loans should automatically qualify for forgiveness after you've spent 20 or 25 years in repayment. Reach out to your loan servicer about any steps you may need to take.
The PSLF application process can take a few months. It may take longer if you haven't been submitting regular PSLF Forms, or shorter. During the wait, you have the option of continuing to make payments or putting your loans into forbearance.
If you're a longtime borrower and you get your loan balance forgiven under the IDR account adjustment, it's possible that you actually overpaid. » MORE: What happens next if your student loans are forgiven? In most cases, you'll get a refund for any overpayments beyond 20 or 25 years.
The Federal Student Aid website says, however, that relief can be expected within four to six weeks of completing the application; the website also advises to apply before Nov. 15, 2022, in order to see your loans forgiven by the end of this year. Some qualified borrowers, however, may see their forgiveness sooner.
Borrowers should expect that the process may take up to six months, and in some cases, longer. But don't worry — if you submitted your PSLF forms by October 31, and those forms are ultimately approved, you will get the benefits of the Limited PSLF Waiver.
Income-driven repayment forgiveness stats
As of June 1, 2021, only 157 of potentially millions of borrowers have received debt cancellation through income-driven repayment forgiveness, according to a March 2022 report by the Government Accountability Office.
You're not eligible for federal student loan forgiveness programs if you have private loans, but there are other strategies for managing private loan debt.
Closed – the loans were sent to a new servicer. * Zero balance – the Education Department may have forgiven the student loan debt, but what's more likely is that the loans were moved to a different servicer.
How many times can you apply for loan forgiveness?
All student loan forgiveness programs only offer a one-time reward. After a student loan forgiveness program has ended, you can't apply for the same forgiveness program again to pay off your debt, even if you've met the conditions for that program.
How long does it take for MOHELA to respond to PSLF? MOHELA takes up to 14 days to acknowledge receipt of your PSLF form and at least 90 business days to process it. Factors like loan transfers and application volume can extend this period.
You will remain responsible for repaying your loan according to the terms of the promissory note you signed. You should talk to your loan servicer about repayment options if you have a Direct Loan or Federal Family Education Loan Program loan.
Credit card debt forgiveness could hurt your credit
You stop making payments to your creditors as you save for your settlement. Creditors typically report the debt as "settled" rather than "paid as agreed" on your credit report once it's paid off. This shows that the creditor wasn't able to collect on the full debt.
MOHELA processes payments and documents sent over from your prior federal student loan servicer. Everything is generally processed within 30 business days. Payments will be made effective as of the date your prior servicer received the payment. Welcome to MOHELA!
The Administration's new plan would cancel debt for all borrowers with only undergraduate student debt who entered repayment 20 or more years ago and cancel loans for borrowers with any graduate student debt that first entered repayment 25 or more years ago. Borrowers who enrolled in low-financial-value programs.
Others received bills with incorrect payment amounts. As a result, the Education Department instructed MOHELA to put affected borrowers into an administrative forbearance until the issue was resolved. The Department also said it would withhold $7.2 million in pay from MOHELA.
In a pair of recent cases, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness program. In Biden v. Nebraska, which was decided 6-3, the court struck down the administration's student loan forgiveness program and agreed with the six challenging states that they had standing to sue.
Do student loans go away after 7 years? While negative information about your student loans may disappear from your credit reports after seven years, the student loans will remain on your credit reports — and in your life — until you pay them off.
The Biden-Harris Administration has now approved nearly $138 billion in student debt cancellation for almost 3.9 million borrowers through more than two dozen executive actions.
How many people have actually had their student loans forgiven?
“The data released today once again make clear that the Biden-Harris Administration's relentless efforts to fix the broken student loan system are paying off in a big way, with more than 3.6 million borrowers now approved for nearly $132 billion in loan forgiveness.
The average student loan debt for bachelor's degree recipients was $29,400 for the 2021-22 school year, according to the College Board. Among all borrowers, the average balance is $38,290, according to mid-2023 data from Experian, one of the three national credit bureaus.
Opponents are concerned that wide-scale student loan forgiveness is poorly targeted and will invariably benefit wealthy student loan borrowers who don't need their student loans cancelled. For example, graduate school debt accounts for more than 40% of all outstanding student loan debt.
To Apply: Contact the school that made the loan or the school's Perkins Loan servicer. See “If You're a Federal Perkins Loan Borrower” below for more information about other ways you can be eligible for Perkins Loan cancellation and discharge.
Those who borrowed from Sallie Mae after this 2014 split have private student loans, which aren't eligible for federal forgiveness programs. However, Sallie Mae will discharge debts for borrowers who die or become totally and permanently disabled.
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