Navigating the New Direct Consolidation Loan Application Process
You’ve done your homework and determined that you are ready to consolidate your federal student loans. Okay, so how do you do it? Good question! To begin with, a new electronic consolidation loan application process was launched on the StudentLoans.gov Web site on January 2, 2014. If you do not have one or more defaulted loans assigned to the Department of Education, you will use the new Direct Consolidation Loan application process. Here’s what you need to know The Federal Direct Consolidation Loan Application…
Is a Direct Consolidation Loan Right For You?
You have a handful of federal student loans and you’re wondering whether it makes sense to consolidate them. Good question! Let’s begin with the basics. A Direct Consolidation Loan allows you to combine your federal student loans into one loan. You can have the convenience of one loan and one loan payment, you can switch older variable interest rate loans to a fixed interest rate, and consolidation can also give you access to alternative repayment plans and forgiveness provisions you would not have had…
Will Proposed Cuts to Public Service Loan Forgiveness Impact Existing Borrowers?
Us student loan borrowers are understandably concerned about parts of President Obama's proposed budget, but we would do well to remember that the budget proposal itself cannot, does not, and never will determine whether any future cuts to student loan forgiveness would apply to existing borrowers. The offending document, the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2015, is a political document. It consists of 212 pages of budget overviews organized by agency and summary tables of the dollar amounts in question.…
President’s Budget Unsettling to High-Debt Student Loan Borrowers
On the one hand, the administration proposes to extend PAYE to all student borrowers starting in 2015, regardless of when they borrowed. That would be nice. But the administration proposes sharply reducing the loan forgiveness available to high-debt student loan borrowers (except they refer to these cuts as "reform[ing] the PAYE terms to ensure that program benefits are targeted to the neediest borrowers." The proposed "reforms" are a response to criticism arguing that existing forgiveness provisions permit already expensive schools…
President’s Proposed Budget is a Starting Point
I don't love everything in the President's proposed budget (more detail on that to follow). No one knows exactly what will happen, but we do know it is supremely unlikely that everything the administration has proposed will come to pass. The federal budget process is a mysterious process with lots of players. My thanks to the Washington Post for their a fantastic interactive tool explaining how it works. Here's a snapshot:
