So I have been a full time public employee for about 8 years. I recall through different student loan service companies (I have been tossed to 3 different companies since graduating in 2016) that as long as I make the minimum monthly payment each month I will qualify after 120 months to get whatever the rest of my loan amount is totally forgiven (I will have to just pay a tax potentially on the forgiven amount of money).
There are a few stipulations I want to work out for the public service loan forgiveness with hopefully someone on here who is knowledgable because after 4 phone calls to my current student loan people I am not getting the same answers:
1) You must be a public employee for the 120 months you make at least the minimum payment. Does this have to be full time or if I go down to part time public employee status and take a full time job in the private sector (bc yeah I might have to work 2 jobs to make ends meet) that should be fine?
2) If a person pays 3 payments in 1 month it does not do them any good if they want to get the maximum amount of loans forgiven under the PSLF, does it? Since you only get to qualify 1 minimum payment per each of the 120 months towards PSLF.
3) The approx. 36 months during the pandemic where no loan payment was due… Those 40 months for the purpose of PSLF count as payments though? So since I have been paying every payment since December 2016 and did not make a payment for those 40 months (May 2020 – September 2023) those 40 months still count towards my 120 don’t they? < This question is the one that nobody on the phone with the company who handles my student loans can answer the same as the next person.
4) The loans that qualify for PSLF must be held for 120 months. In other words if Bob graduated in 2012 with a bachelors degree and has federal student loans and Bob was a public worker between 2012 – 2018 and then quits the public sector in 2018 and also goes back to get his masters degree the clock ~~stops~~ pauses for counting towards the 120 months. Say Bob graduates with his masters in 2020 and gets a job as a public sector worker again… The months start adding up in 2020 towards PSLF. The approx. 2 years between 2018-2020 do NOT count towards the 120 months. Someone at the student loan company told me that in this situation the 2 years would still count as long as they found another public sector job. I was like “no honey that’s not how that works”. Or is this a loophole? I also asked the person on the phone if any loans taken out for the masters in this situation would be eligible to be forgiven and they said “yes in the same timeframe as the ones for Bob’s bachelor”. I really hope they were kidding or naive and do not actually think that that is how that works.
5) Last: YOU must take action after the 120 month mark of making payments while being a public sector employee to get PSLF done. I would suggest around the (here is a question for someone to clarify ? 110 month mark or maybe 115 month mark ?) to send in the paperwork and then send it in again when you are actually at the 120 month mark and to get the process going ASAP.
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