“Dear Steve,
My wife works in the Boston public school system. has for 10+ years. she has ~$95K in student loans.
I thought she should qualify for debt relief since she works in the school system. Unfortunately, they look at our joint income, which puts us out of contention. Their formula doesn’t account for all the expenses we incur with 3 young children.
How do we get the system to focus on her income and access the student debt relief we seek?
Much appreciated,
Adam”
Do You Have a Question You'd Like Help With? Contact Debt Coach Damon Day. Click here to reach Damon.
Dear Adam,
I think you might be getting a couple of different programs mixed up. The first would be the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that would eliminate her federal student loans after 120 on-time payments after October, 2007.
While that program discharges loan balances, it does not lower your payments. I think you might be talking about some sort of income driven repayment program. In that case you should probably take a look at these programs.
However, I can’t stress enough that you must confirm her public school service qualifies for inclusion under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Otherwise you might head for a payment reduction that would just put your deeper in debt. If she will qualify for loan forgiveness in October, 2017, then an Income Based Repayment Program would be worth considering at this point.
To learn more about the dangers of reduced payments, see Why Income Based Student Loan Payments Can Be a Terrible Trap.
Please post your responses and follow-up messages to me on this in the comments section below.
