Quote:
Originally Posted by Motts
Hi @ SprinkL3 thank you for sharing your story and I’m relieved to read that you were able to get your loans forgiven despite that $1,000 amount that you had to repay. I’m sorry to read that you are disabled. I hope you at least have more support now and that your VA would pay for you to return to school. That would be awesome if you could do that.
I have a BA already and an MA. So, I can’t get scholarships or grants anymore. My choices at this stage are income based repayments for 25 years every year, so that I can get the rest of the enormous amount of loans forgiven. I had been on a ten year forgiveness plan like thousands of other students, but the Dept of Education reneged on my ten years of on-time payments. Basically I was told when I called that I completed the wrong forms (a 100% lie, I completed the correct forms).
It’s in the news currently, the way the Dept of Ed is bilking people out of their repayment plans, by claiming wrong forms, etc. no signatures. All lies on the Dept of Ed’s part as usual.
I will just make my monthly payments for 25 years and hope in that span of time, our gov’t and the Dept of Ed. Are overhauled and student debt forgiveness is allowed via bankruptcy again like it was in the 1970s before the law was changed in 1976. |
First, you could try to appeal the Dept. of Ed. in some way. If you have proof from email correspondence, etc., that will help your case. Also, try to see if there are ongoing class action lawsuits.
Second, you can always find some type of scholarship to help you - even if you have those two degrees. The scholarships might help you with a new degree for a new career, like I've seen from those who restarted at a community college and became PTK members - even with having earned a BA or MA before; they still earned transfer scholarships to help out with a new degree plan. Many BA's or BS's will attach an extra one-year plan to earn a MA or MS. Some scholarships will extend for all those years, and some will end when the Master's degree plan begins (but that's only one year). Even if you incur a small amount of debt, it might be worth the extra income you'd earn from that field to pay off all your student loans in the future.
Third, if you were on a government forgiveness plan when you worked for certain industries, see what you can do to fight those, or see what you can do to make other arrangements - such as getting partial forgiveness or otherwise, or finding a different repayment plan altogether. Sometimes working for industry will earn you more money to pay off your student loans than trying to deal with the nuances of the politicized government forgiveness plan or something.
Fourth, you are a thousand steps ahead of me - with your master's degree!
If you have your MA, you could go for either a 2nd Master's degree or a professional degree or a Ph.D. or some other doctoral degree, and then that would temporarily halt your repayments (in theory) until you finish out your next degree. You would need two strong recommendations (typically from volunteering or working in a research environment) plus one strong recommendation from outside academia or research, such as from an employer or a professor you knew.
Additionally, some people have even went back to community college to halt some of their student loans, as their reasoning was that their current degree wasn't lucrative for the job market and their age or disability, so then they decided to change fields altogether. Some have started from the very bottom (community college) and up, paying out of pocked for their community college degrees (such as an AS in some science field, to boost your skills and career paths). I've seen that, as a former chapter president of an honor society at a community college only (Phi Theta Kappa - aka PTK). If you return to community college, you can earn a PTK transfer scholarship (I earned a $40k one - $10k administered every year, so long as my GPA was >3.5), and others have earned smaller ones or full rides, which will help you to achieve a second bachelor's and/or master's degree when you transfer with said scholarship.
You could also opt to get recommendations from the workforce to enter into a doctoral program, if your specific field allows for professional or doctoral programs that the company will pay for. If you're good at research and stats, and if you are good at writing and meeting deadlines, then a doctoral program might be for you. In a Ph.D. program, you could get a full tuition waiver plus a living wage with an assistantship, so then you could get a better job after you complete 3 to 6 additional years of schooling plus maybe a 1-year internship plus maybe a 1-year post-doc before you have an early career transition. It's a lot of years, but you are still relatively young! Your wages could increase by $20k per year, which means an extra $20k to pay off your student loans every year without having incurred any further student debts from a doctoral program. So far, I think PhD programs are the only programs that allow full tuition waivers (almost like a full ride), whereas professional doctoral and other programs may require you to get more loans - at least if you have a 50% tuition waiver and an assistantship.
Check into those.
Also, check and see with your loan companies if they would defer (not default) your loans if you returned to college. That's one temporary way out of this mess, esp. if your new degree will earn you more money than the degrees you have now (whether it be through community college - earning extra skills; undergrad - earning a second degree; or grad - earning a second degree or doctoral degree to boost your income hopefully).