Over 800,000 borrowers have already seen their student loan debt completely wiped away! If this hasn't happened to you yet, the good news is more forgiveness is on the way for those who will soon qualify and take ACTION!IDR stands for Income Driven Repayment and was originally designed to offer borrowers payments they could afford with forgiveness built in after 20 or 25 years worth of payments . The complexity of the federal student loan system, however, created the following problems:- 10 different repayment plans offered created confusion amongst borrowers on whether they were working towards forgiveness or not.- Periods of deferment and forbearance didn't count towards the 20 or 25 years- Each repayment plan had it's own unique set of rules. Some were 20, some were 25 and also varied depending on whether the loans were undergraduate or graduate.- Consolidation would 'restart' the loans and the IDR payment counts sending borrowers back to 'square one'.- There was no pubically available IDR payment counter that the borrower could reguarly verify and keep track of their progress towards forgiveness. Data has been known to get lost when the federal government switches contracted student loan service providers.- Many borrowers take out mulitple student loans over the course of their college career and each loan had it's own IDR forgiveness timeline.If anyone knows how to make a mess out of something that should be simple, leave it up to the government, right?Thankfully, the current administration has taken unprecendented steps to fix this issue going forward by reviewing all federal student loan data and updating the IDR payment counts for borrowers to see how close they are to forgiveness and including some periods of derferement and forbearance that were previously excluded.The problem some borrowers will face is if they took out student loans prior to 2010, they need to check that their loan is eligible for this one time adjustment. If they have an older FFEL, Perkins, or HEAL Loan they want to have included in the IDR Adjustment, they will need to Consolidate before the deadline of 12/31/2023.Also, some borrowers many want to consider consolidating older loans with newer loans to plus up the count to apply to the ENTIRE BALANCE of the debt owed. This is an incredible one-time opportnity that shouldn't be missed.As with any information I provide, there is NO One-Size-Fits-All answer. The choice to Consolidate is IRREVERSIBLE and should always be approached with Extreme Caution. Parent PLUS Borrowers should NEVER Consolidate without speaking to a Financial Professional who is also a Student Loan Expert.There are also MAJOR CONSIDERATIONS if you have both Undergraduate and Graduate loans as you may or may not want to consolidate those together depending on when you took those out and how close you are to forgiveness.IDR counts won't be available until mid-2024 which will require a complete data review. Don't leave it up to chance. Student Loan Coach can help!
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