Seeing that I am about to enter student loan repayments, I have been keeping up with what our lovely Department of Education is doing in order to protect prior and existing borrowers. And from what I have seen from education secretary Betsy DeVos, it isn't much. They are too busy undoing what was supposed to help borrowers.

This is based on an interesting story from our friends at The Consumerist that discussed how the first few people enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was supposed to start seeing their loan balances forgiven this month.

The program was to grant those working in the public sector (police, teachers, etc.) and certain non-profits, student loan debt forgiveness after making 10 years of on-time payments.

But guess what? It isn't happening.

I talked to a 2006 Texas Tech Graduate, under the condition of anonymity, who is currently an educator at South Plains College. He told me that he applied for the program when it first went online in 2007. He made every single one of his 120 required payments on time but got notice this month that he still had a balance, a very large one.

He contacted his loan servicer who told him he had never applied and had no record of any such application. But, in fact, he did and has evidence. Fedloan wasn't interested in hearing it and instead demanded payment on the remaining balance.

Don't get a surprise of your own. If you have student loans and are in special repayment programs, or in a program like  Public Service Loan Forgiveness you need to check on the status of your program and payments regularly. And always keep any and all documentation you get from your servicer.

 

 

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