lifeasmission

Kiss Those School Loans Bye-Bye!

March 17, 2010

A few weeks ago Amy and I were having dinner with some friends.  We were talking about student loans and as we were leaving they started to tell us about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Income Based Repayment (IBR) programs.

The PSLF is a federal student loan program that forgives whatever debt you have left after 10 years of payments made while in public service or under the employ of a 501c3.

The IBR is another federal program that structures the amount of your payments based on your family size and income level.

You’ll find links to Q&A pdf’s regarding both of these programs on this page.

Since Amy and I envision giving the better part of our lives to work in and through non-profit organizations, we are beginning the process of getting into these programs.

The first step is to get your loans from whatever lender they are currently with over to Direct Loans, a federal loan provider.  You can do this online here.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far, but from what I understand, once we’ve moved/consolidated our loans to Direct Loans, we can then take advantage of the IBR and PSLF programs.

It’s more than mildly unfortunate and upsetting that (at least in my experience) Christian schools, whose student populations are largely focused on non-profit work, aren’t doing a better job of informing students of these programs so maybe you’ll help me get the word out!

Posted in: money, theological education