My mom qualified for, and received, federal student loan forgiveness. Yes, she had to make payments and work in a qualifying job for 10 years but due to her low income the payment amount was adjusted down.
Unless you’re in a position that qualifies for loan forgiveness, and you trust that forgiveness will be there when you qualify, income based payment rates are not a good idea. The total amount owed by my mom actually grew over the years because the amount she was paying was less than the amount of interest charged. For a bit when she was 8 years in she had a scare that she wouldn’t qualify and was shocked to find this out, despite saying “I’ve paid thousands!!!”.
Your average American isn’t very financially literat, or lives in the land of denial, which makes them easy to take advantage of.
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Most people are relying on income-driven repayment due to high interest rates and inflated tuition costs. IDR reduces your monthly payment to a fixed percentage of your income, but it does not scale the interest generated on the principle. The new SAVE plan was intended to scale the interest along with the monthly payment so your debt wouldn’t keep piling up due to being on IDR.
Trump is removing all forms of IDR and blocking applications to renew existing plans, which means everyone will be forced to pay their full monthly amount (which is based on a 10 yr payoff plan). A lot of newer student loans are close to ~$100K or more, so imagine trying to pay that off in 10 yrs in the current job market.
Prepare for mass defaults on loans. This is absolutely going to crash the economy, and will very likely be worse than the housing market crash in ~2009.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
That’s going to be offset by the coming war in Central America, ostensibly against the cartels that he is claiming are running the region.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Thanks for the details - it sounds like you’re saying reduced payments under IDR are basically partial payments, which I assume would be applied only to the interest, thus making the debt last forever. Sounds like a plan bankers would come up with to create perpetual interest revenue. SAVE makes a lot more sense in terms of actually helping people - so no wonder Bonespurs & Company would block it. Can’t have Big Gubmint interfering with the freedom to indenture people.