As someone with outstanding debt from being a non-traditional student, frankly every part of this plan is HUGE. Not enough, but huge compared to everything jackass has done so far, and really capable of impacting peoples’ lives.
I was able to pay half of my yearly tuition due to having had a much better job then, which vanished permanently during early COVID.
So after graduation I was left with just over 17,000 dollars in primary. (Peanuts compared to a lot of borrowers, I know.)
If you don’t have student loans, you may not really get how bad the interest rates are. Before this bill I stood to pay 30,000 over the next twenty years. Yes, that’s more than half again in interest.
Now, this bill is targeted to people like me who have small outstanding loans, low income and so on. I benefit more than a vast majority of borrowers because this will wipe out more than half of what I owe, cap my payments at something ludicrously small… something like 50 bucks a month, and forgive me the remainder at just about the age my father retired at. I’m hardly the typical case.
BUT! Every part of this does benefit a huge number of borrowers. If you make less than, I think it was 120,000 a year, as most graduates do, you are going to have $10,000 or $20,000 (if you had Pell grants) shaved off your outstanding debt, UP TO THE OUTSTANDING AMOUNT. That’s not nearly enough but it’s really something.
Your monthly income-based payment is capped at 5% of your monthly discretionary income, as opposed to 10% before. That’s precious breathing room for a huge number of working people, and it really, truly makes a difference.
After ten years, people who have been paying will be forgiven. Like, that’s the wham line here. Most of us stand to spend the next several decades paying, and to have it reduced to a single decade will let a lot of young people escape debt with a lot of their adult lives left.
And lastly, yes, while you’re paying you won’t be accruing interest, which is ENORMOUS when you consider that there are people who had $50,000 primary, paid on it at punishing rates for twenty years, and now have $70,000 outstanding.
YOU HAVE TO APPLY BY THE END OF THE YEAR.
I can’t stress how important this could be for you. If you have any federal student loans at all, follow the link above and apply. If you’re eligible, you won’t be turned away if you get that form in by the end of the year. This is being billed explicitly as a “one time” cancellation, so get it while it’s hot.
In some ways this is the least I would have accepted, but it’s something and I need to know that people are taking advantage of it.
Go read the full text and if you’re eligible, apply, please.
