My partner and I have about 60k in student loans and haven’t been paying even though they started back in October. I’m waiting to see if maybe we just shouldn’t. I remember there being chatter about how Nelnet and other loan holders had like laid off a bunch of people during the pause and hadn’t hired them back, and the system is overloaded and fucked, and how are people suddenly going to pay a big monthly expense anyway, etc etc. But if people were to not pay them, I feel like the media would not want to perpetuate that narrative and build it into something real by spreading the word so to speak. So I don’t know if there’s a way to gauge is people are actually paying them? Does anyone know?

  • pooh [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I haven’t been paying them. I didn’t even realize they started back up. I’m guessing a lot of people are doing the same, which is great.

  • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I have no idea what’s going on. Nelnet says my required payment is zero but we should have restarted payments. I think they’re just racking up interest right now to fuck us over idk

  • Raebxeh@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I got a good income based repayment plan and I’m only paying $100/month on six figures of debt. I work in the public sector so it should be all forgiven in 10 years. I need my credit to not be dogshit so I can buy a car when my current one breaks. So yeah. That $100/month is basically a protection racket on my ability to get to work.

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    If I remember correctly, those are the only loans that can garnish your wages. If absolutely nothing else, I would just pay them one month, not pay them for three months, pay them again, and then continue that cycle.

  • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.one
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    11 months ago

    I started paying my public loans back. I hope they eventually allow some portion of student loan forgiveness, but on the off chance they aren’t, there’s no way I’m dealing with wage garnishing.

  • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I regretfully resumed payments, but only because I’m very close to the 20-year end-of-plan thing with IDR/IBR. If it gets forgiven this year, then I won’t have to pay taxes on the forgiven portion as income, which would be great.

    And if it doesn’t get forgiven this year, then idk what I’ll do. Count how many payments to forgiveness versus how much it’ll fuck me on taxes and figure out what’s the best way to go, I guess.

  • RonPaulyShore [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    You should get on IDR and make payments. If your income is low enough, you won’t have to pay anything, and even if it’s a bit higher than that, you’re payments should be manageable.

  • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    I think my wife’s student loan has like 1,75% interest on it, so it’s not a huge amount, but it does represent another debt that we need to get rid of. We also just got an interest rate increase on our car, which means that any available income we have is going towards paying that off as soon as possible. I think so far this past year we have paid an additional 3-4 months off of our loan, and later this month we’ll pay another 3.