Student Loans got moved back to January 2021?

[underpants]

I must have missed this.
Got this email this morning.





On Aug. 8, 2020, President Trump extended the 0% student loan interest rate and suspension of payments on federal student loans owned by the Department of Education (ED) until Dec. 31, 2020.

What does this mean?

You are not required to make payments on ED-owned loans until Jan. 1, 2021, and no interest will accumulate.
Payments you would have made, but are no longer required to make, will count toward Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan loan forgiveness.
Payments you would have made, but are no longer required to make, will count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) if you have a non-defaulted Direct Loan and work full-time for a qualifying employer during the suspension. You will need to submit an Employment Certification Form that includes this period to receive credit for your employment during this suspension of payment period.
If you can continue paying your student loans while your loans are at 0% interest rate, your payments go farther toward reducing the principal balance of your loan amount once any outstanding interest has been paid. If you are already making voluntary payments nothing changes. If not, you may make voluntary payments by contacting us.

[aikoaiko]

1. Its take 20 years but I'm down to my last $1500 on Fed Student Loans.

I'm grateful for the student loans. They carried me through my PhD years because the $10,000 per year stipend wasn't enough.

And when I graduated I landed a nice tenure-track position.

But that was 20 years ago and things are very different for students and graduates these days.

I support reducing or eliminating student debt even if it doesn't help me.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. This is the next big crisis

Grads mortgaged their futures for an education and too many will never be able to pay them back. I am philosophically against total forgiveness, but that may be our only hope to get a generation back on track.

Student loan payments are crippling generations of people's retirements and quality of life.

[Claustrum]

3. Instead of total forgiveness, we could forgive to a certain amount that's proportional to salary

Or pay certain amount proportional to salary for 15 years and then the rest forgiven. I think we all are responsible for the amount we borrowed for but I also don't want to see people still paying their student loan in their 60s or 70s.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. 0% interest and fees and all accrued interest is forgiven.

That's my compromise, you borrowed $30,000, you pay back $30,000 and not one cent more. Government services loans for free.

And you let people pay back over a longer period of time, like a home mortgage. $100 for 25 years makes the payment $100 a month for the above borrower.

Maybe there's a forgiveness program for people who owe way too much to pay, but 0% interest for everyone is ideal to me.

[obamanut2012]

5. 100% agree with this

[Claustrum]

7. I still think proportional to salary is more suitable

$100 dollars for a 40k salary is very different from $100 dollars for a 100k salary. If you borrowed 50k to earn a CS degree and work a fix figure engineering job, you can afford to pay more than someone with a 40k salary. And an entry level person will earn much less than a mid-career person. It has to be linked to salary and ability to pay. This has more to do with the overall cost because we don't have unlimited money. Lets focus our help to the people that really needs it, ie, people that earn less and need more help.

[2naSalit]

6. Well, it's beneficial to some of us...

so of course it will be downplayed, if you know what I mean.

For the large numbers of adults who opted for higher education in the early 90s, many of my classmates were at least thirty years old, this is very helpful. Along with having 2001 grads getting totally screwed because already negotiated employment after graduation simply ceased to exist within days of 9/11 , ageism was a big problem finding any work at all by the time jobs started showing up again. It was at least a year before many were able to find work in their field of interest for a living wage which would include fedloan payments... for many it never happened at all.