Should you consider requesting a deferment or forbearance for federal student loans?

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Posted on November 29th, 2018

Did you take on a large amount of debt to pay for college, and are you struggling to pay it off? If so, you are not alone. According to the Federal Reserve, 20% of individuals with outstanding student loans were behind on their payments in 2017.1 You may want to consider requesting a deferment or forbearance if you are having difficulty keeping up with your federal student loan payments.

Provided certain eligibility requirements are met, both a deferment and a forbearance allow you to temporarily stop making payments or temporarily reduce your monthly payment amount for a specified time period. The key difference between the two is that with a deferment, you may not have to pay back any interest that accrues on the loan during the deferment period, depending on the type of loan you have. During a forbearance, you are responsible for paying any accrued interest on the loan, regardless of the type of loan you have.

In order to obtain a deferment or forbearance, you will need to submit a request to your loan servicer. Most deferments and forbearances are granted for a specific time period (e.g., six months), and you may need to reapply periodically to maintain your eligibility. In addition, there is usually a limit to the number of times they are granted over the course of your loan. If you meet the eligibility requirements for a mandatory forbearance (e.g., National Guard duty), your lender is required to grant you a forbearance.

Whenever interest accrues on a loan during a deferment or forbearance, you can either pay the interest as it accrues, or it can be added to the overall principal balance of the loan at the end of the deferment or forbearance period. It is important to remember that if you don’t pay the interest on your loans and allow it to accrue, the total amount you repay over the life of your loan will be higher. As a result, you should weigh the pros and cons of requesting a deferment or forbearance and consider your repayment options. For more information on your federal student loan repayment options, visit studentaid.ed.gov.

Are you eligible for public service loan forgiveness?

If you are employed by a government or not-for-profit organization, you may be able to receive loan forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program. The PSLF, which began in 2007, forgives the remaining balance on federal Direct Loans after you have made 120 monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer.

Qualifying employers for PSLF include: government organizations (e.g., federal, state, local), not-for-profit organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501C(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and other types of not-for-profit organizations that are not tax-exempt if their primary purpose is to provide certain types of qualifying public services.

If you plan on applying for PSLF in the future, you should complete and submit an Employment Certification form annually or when you change employers. The U.S. Department of Education will use the information on the form to let you know if you are making qualifying PSLF payments.

You can apply for PSLF once you have made 120 qualifying monthly payments towards your loan (e.g., 10 years). Keep in mind that you must be working for a qualifying employer both at the time you submit the application and at the time the remaining balance on your loan is forgiven.

Recently, PSLF made headlines due to the fact that many borrowers who thought they were working toward loan forgiveness under the program found out they were ineligible because they were in the wrong type of repayment plan. Many borrowers claimed they were told by their loan servicer that they qualified for PSLF, when in fact they did not. In 2018, Congress set aside $350 million to help fix this problem. The Consolidated Appropriations Act provides limited, additional conditions under which borrowers may become eligible for loan forgiveness if some or all of the payments they made on their federal Direct Loans were under a nonqualifying repayment plan for the PSLF Program. For more information on PSLF, visit studentaid.ed.gov.

 

Source:Broadridge

1Federal Reserve, Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017, May 2018