If you don’t think your debt can be erased you may be surprised
By Genevieve Dobson

In a world of information misinformation can spread like a wild fire.  Most people think that you have to be a police officer or fireman or really poor to qualify for forgiveness and if you are one of those people trust me when I say you are not alone.  Fortunately for all those who don’t fit in this bucket there are forgiveness options for you too.  This blog discusses how the forgiveness programs work.

We have Three different forgiveness options available for federal student loans:

1. Public Service Loan Forgiveness
2. IBR Forgiveness
3. Pay-as-You-Earn Forgiveness

• Public Service Loan forgiveness is for those who work in the public sector which includes anyone who works at a 501 (c)(3) company, which is essentially a non-profit organization.  For example, you could be an accountant at a 501 (c)(3) company or you could be a police officer or a librarian.  If you work in one of these fields; non-profit, state/government employee or any other public sector you can expect to receive forgiveness on your loans after 10 years assuming you have not paid off your balances at that time.

• The IBR forgiveness program is for anyone who qualifies for an IBR payment which means Income Based Repayment.  There is a misconception that you would have to be poor to qualify for IBR.  IBR is based on your income, family size, student loan balances and rates.  Therefore as an example, someone making $60,000 per year who has $100,000 in student loans could still qualify for IBR.  This program allows for forgiveness of the loans after 25 years of payments.

• The Pay-as-you-Earn plan  is a fairly new program and has very specific rules.  The way it works is you have to have new loans that were disbursed after Oct. 1, 2011 with no loans disbursed before Oct. 1, 2007. If you meet this criteria you can look forward to having your loans forgiven after 20 years of on-time payments.

So there are three ways to have your loans forgiven.  I am not saying its a perfect solution but it is better then no solutions at all.  As the government continues to evolve and recognize the need to do even more we will see more solutions arise.

To learn more about your options go to DegreesofSuccessInfo.com.