I’m a 43 year old attorney. I graduated from law school in 2013. I had zero family support and my oldest son was born in October of 1L year. Unfortunately, that marriage quickly fell apart, and I was a single parent in law school and up until about eight years ago when I met my now wife.
People were impressed that I managed to get through law school under all that stress, in a city where I had no connections, but the trade off is that I put everything on the credit card. Babysitters, rent, a new laptop, everything was student loans.
What I was told at the time is that there was a plan that would require me to pay 10% of my discretionary income and after 20 years, everything will be forgiven. I just simply accepted that that was my only option and what I was supposed to do and that’s just how I planned everything.
So now here I am like 12 years into my career and I’m suddenly told that the 20 year option no longer exists. And because I’m finally making a relatively high income, what I realized is that my only realistic option is to try to pay off the whole thing as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, because I was going along with these false promises from the government, I blindly have been allowing interest to pile up all these years.
Now the total of the loans is about $300,000, much higher than it was when I left school even though I’ve never been in default. By my math, I need to start coming up with like $6000 a month just so that I can try to pay this off in like five years and hopefully be out of debt by the time I’m 50. I really feel like I got screwed.
Can we at least find some way to pressure Congress to forgive the interest if nothing else? I think many people who accepted the 20 year plan would never have allowed this interest to pile up if people had had any idea that the government could just simply take away the promise after more than a decade.
Posted by simplerway
16 Comments
You have always only qualified for Old IBR because you had loans before July 1, 2014 and those have always had a 25 year repayment period (300 payments) for forgiveness. I believe Old lBR still exists and provided you meet the financial qualifications, your loans should still be forgiven after 25 years. You never qualified for 20 year forgiveness.
Best wishes. According to Dave Ramsey very few people ever have loans forgiven. I would check out Dave Ramsey baby steps for paying off the loans. My wife and I paid off 120k in student loan debt in 7 years. I went to law school and borrowed 100k.
Hi friend, I’m in a similar situation. I’m a lawyer, 38 years old, graduated from law school in 2012, had a baby the summer before my 1L year who is now preparing to go to college herself.
I qualified for PSLF for about 1.5 years as a state government employee before my agency privatized. I worked for the contractor for another 7.5 years and did not get any PSLF credit for that even though I was doing the exact same work and didn’t make that much more money. Then I became a federal employee in 2024, but I haven’t made any qualifying PSLF payments since SAVE was suspended. Basically, I only have 18 qualifying PSLF payments even though I’ve been a public servant for 11 years. Now being kicked off save and forced onto either IBR or RAP, where my monthly payment will increase 623%.
At this point, I’m used to the failed promises at every turn so I am happy to make the bare minimum payments until I (eventually, hopefully) achieve forgiveness. I don’t plan to take any action on my loans until I absolutely have to.
Shit like this is making me lean towards giving them a $1 a month until I croak
I believe you’re referring to PAYE getting taken away. Is that what plan you’re on? In our situation, we are just switching to old IBR, which is written into law and should be around for good. You get loans forgiven after 25 years. Praying the tax bomb gets axed before we get forgiven, but we are saving for that just in case. You’ll have to run your numbers through a calculator to see if old IBR makes sense for you.
Congressional Republicans and this president made it clear they don’t support student loan parity programs, so the time to pressure Congress was at the voting booth. I had people on this very sub arguing with me about how it’s not a partisan issue- but it very much is, and many student loan holders are finding out the hard way that both parties are not the same. Vote blue up and down the ballot in every single election if you want meaningful change on this issue.
Similar situation here. Graduated from law school in 2012. I only decided to go to law school because of the repayment plans in place at that time. Now it’s all been blown up. So many of us made financial decisions relying on those plans and now there is no recourse.
I was on REPAYE since exiting college and then moved into SAVE when that was dissolved. I just explained it to my husband like this:
This is a very similar situation to our mortgage. We got the mortgage, knowing that we could afford it as long as it was a 30 year mortgage but one day they just decide to do away with 30 year mortgages and force us into a 15 year mortgage and we either pay up or the government‘s coming after us.
How is this not illegal!?
At least you have income how about all the people with 300k debt earning 80k annually????!!!!!!
In a very similar situation. Also a lawyer. I resonate with everything you said. It’s completely insane and we just have to get these nincompoops out of office.
Let’s pray for OP that dems take back congress and prevent PAYE from sunsetting
Do you consolidate between 2022 and 2024?
Same. Trump is a huge asshole who enjoys making debtors more miserable. It’s all about the cruelty with these people.
If the lawyer doesn’t know what to do. I definitely don’t know what to do.
Same here – law school (2011 grad), $300,000, etc. In 2024 I refinanced into IBR and I found out a few weeks ago that my loans have been wiped out, forgiven! Have you refinanced/consolidated into IBR?
It’s really depressing to me that all the lawyers on here feel as hopeless as the rest of us. I think many people – myself included – have been banking on the promise of legal action to challenge this bullshit the government keeps throwing at us. HOW can it possibly be legal for them to constantly change the terms of a contract that we all signed??!? What is the point of the contract in that case? Rules for thee but not for me. The whole system is farce, and you can only sue your way out of your debt if you’re a part of the nepo-baby, kid-diddling asshole club, apparently.