Hi all!
So I began nonprofit work at Children’s Hospital in 2013, when I decided to return to grad school for my MBA. I chose the best school in the area which came with a high price tag. I also have a great deal of undergrad student loans as I had children and needed cost of living loans to get through undergrad in my twenties. I will have six figure of debt for the six years of school when I finish. Please no judgements friends… I needed this money to provide for my family while I was pursuing my education and improving my career skills. I am still working in nonprofit and plan to spend my career in finance in nonprofit. My concern is that I will not graduate from my MBA until June of 2017. I could rush it and finish in March of 2017. I want to make sure I am grandfathered into the PSLF. My first undergrad loans are way back in 2009.

On a lot of posts it says you will be grandfathered in if you are a current borrower in the plan… well what if my loans are in deferment? To protect myself, should I make some payments while I am in grad school and opt out of deferment?

Any help here would be fabulous since I was planning on income based repayment for 10 years, followed by PSLF. I could have gone into the for-profit finance sector and made a lot more money, but chose this path purposefully. The forgiveness of debt was a factor, and now I am feeling nervous.

Thank you!

No judgements here… I"m also at 6 figures debt for a degree with a very limited job market which will probably never happen. Any posts that you have read about being “grandfathered in” are mere speculation at this point. There is nothing official. There is no way to enroll in the plan currently….the closest thing to it is to send in an employer certification form to get your loans transferred to Fedloan servicing, and they will put you in their system and count the number of payments you have made so far.

As I have mentioned, the only way that I can perceive a change happening is for them to make the current repayment plans unavailable, and make a new repayment plan without PSLF. If it is announced that that is what will happen, I’d request a stop to your in school deferments (if that’s even possible) and quickly enroll in a repayment plan for the loans that you do have, so you can jump on the old plan before it goes away. This might be problematic though, as I’m not sure it is possible to waive your 6 month grace period after graduating/leaving school. You’d have to do some research there. Plus, I’m not sure how much of an announcement they’d give…. again, I could be totally wrong in the end. Truth is, no one really knows. We can only hope.

Thanks for your input -
I contacted Navient, and only the loans that are 6 months or less are ineligible to pay on right now. So, for example:
I have $80k in loans from 2010-December 2016.
I take out $30k in loans from January - October 2016
If in October of 2016 a change is announced, what I can do is file for income based repayment in July 2016. It takes a month to process. My payment will be due in September. Therefore, $80K of payments will be grandfathered in and eligible for PSLF, no matter what. That is coming from Navient reps… who knows how accurate that is though!

With the upcoming election, I have a feeling that we are really looking at October of 2017 for any actual changes. My goal is to have almost all of my loans be 6 months old by then. And then…..cross fingers for 10 years LOL!
Maybe Heather can weigh in.
If something really squirrelly happens, than I go work at Fidelity or Morgan Stanley. Which is a shame, because I would rather give my talents to Children’s Hospital.