I Just Formally Applied for My One-Time Student Loan Forgiveness

Summary

The author has applied for one-time student loan forgiveness, a process they found surprisingly straightforward and quick, with potential for complete erasure of their debt, pending legal challenges.

Abstract

The author of the article describes their experience with applying for the one-time student loan forgiveness offered by the Biden administration. Despite anticipating a complex process, they were pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the application, which required only basic personal information and took less than two minutes to complete. The author's eligibility is based on their income and loan amount, which fall within the program's thresholds. Although there is a current legal challenge to the forgiveness plan, the administration is encouraging eligible individuals to apply before the December 31, 2023 deadline. The author expresses hope that this relief will resolve their personal debt crisis, improve their credit score, and potentially open doors to future financial stability, such as homeownership.

Opinions

The author believes the application process for student loan forgiveness is easier than expected and more straightforward than filling out a tax form.
They are optimistic about the potential impact of the forgiveness plan on their financial situation, expecting it to either eliminate their student loan debt entirely or make it more manageable.
The author is confident that the legal challenge to the student loan forgiveness plan will be overcome, allowing them and millions of other Americans to have a significant portion of their debt relieved.
They reflect on past negative impacts of student loan debt on their credit score, including a substantial drop due to missed payments and potential defaulting.
The author harbors hope for future financial opportunities, such as homeownership, as a result of the debt relief and the subsequent repair of their credit.

I am clearly under the income threshold with my loans and well within the amount too

By Stilfehler — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85085204, Old graph but still an effective visual representation of growing student debt in each age group.

I went to the Federal Student Aid website and clicked on the page to find the easily accessible page for one-time student loan forgiveness. If anyone is wondering, yes, that embedded link is the link to the site where you apply and goes right to the page.

It was literally just my full name, social security number, email address, phone number, and date of birth that I needed to provide in the form. I expected the Biden administration’s website and form to be a lot more complicated to enroll for the one-time relief but I found this easier than filling out a tax form. The process took less than two minutes and now all I have to do is wait for them to approve it.

There is one roadblock currently to student loan forgiveness in the form of a lawsuit to block this plan by six Republican-led states (Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina). The administration expects this to be a very temporary hurdle as there seems to be no legal precedent for the lawsuit.

They are encouraging anyone who still needs to apply for student loan forgiveness to go for it. The deadline to complete the application is December 31, 2023. That’s over a year to complete this simple application. If you’ve currently got federal student loans totaling $10,000 without Pell Grants or $20,000 or more with and make less than $125,000 individually and $250,000 as a family, then you will be eligible for some relief.

With my low income and decently low student loan debt, this one-time relief should actually wipe out my entire bill. If I do have anything left to pay, it will definitely be manageable and I might be able to pay it without my loan servicers continuously bothering me since I make no real income individually to even start repaying it without some sort of program. The initial announcement earlier in the year was music to my ears as now I have hope to get myself out of my personal debt crisis.

My credit score over the years has definitely taken a hit more than once based on just my student loan payments alone. Then I tried to contest some missed payments in my history because Navient at the time hadn’t confirmed that they had the right information for me and I didn’t even know that my loans had gotten back to potentially defaulting at one point.

Those 18 missed payments from 2014 before I got the job at Verizon gave my credit score a good whacking. That was at least 100 points or more on top of the fact that the debt was right around $10,000 in total. I’m confident that once the petty political game is over, my application will be reviewed and like millions of my fellow Americans, we will have a large amount of our debt relieved immediately.

Maybe, someday now, I could have some hope of being able to become a homeowner at some point. Even if that isn’t the case, hopefully, my credit being repaired will lead to other great things in the future.