Your pennies-on-the-dollar offer is highly unlikely to work. That said, they can’t take away IDR repayment. IDR is a term of your loan contract and many of the IDR plans are codified in federal law.

Thanks. I am on a fixed amount a month plan for approximately a billion years and I chose that because I wanted to be able to channel more into retirement. At that time with an income one I would have been be paying far more a month). At one point I was told if I moved to any of the income dependent ones I’d have to reset. I’ll check that to see if that is still true.

I sure hope the tax bomb goes away for more than the limited time Biden’s administration as authorized.

The tax is definitely a concern. However, it is quite possible that the “tax bomb” will be eliminated.

I’d definitely encourage you to have a plan if forgiveness is taxed, but you may never need it.

As for the reset, I think you should double-check that info. Borrowers can even switch from one repayment plan to another without restarting the clock.

Thanks for your suggestion. The thing I worry about is that what is forgiven is taxable. While I see that only 50% of the interest will be capitalized (which I didn’t know so you are right this is a better option than most), eventually I’ll hit a much higher amount due. I am not positive I’d be considered totally insolvent since they count anything in retirement accounts along with your first born. I really worry about that. I have read that many circuits don’t count against you not doing these kinds of repayment plans since you are just substituting one debt for another and that ‘other’ isn’t forgivable under any circumstance unless you are insolent.

Also they reset the count on the number of years you are paying so I’d owe 25 more (all grad school debt) which would carry me well into retirement and thus risk I’d not to be able to afford medicare gap insurance. If one ever lets that drop you have to pass medical underwriting to get it back. I’d fail due to 3 cancers. I’d never be able to afford paying an unlimited 20% of costs plus whatever the deductible is for each hospitalization. That would be a death sentence. Of course that would solve the problem, just not in an optimal way LOL.

Is there any way to see if anyone in the federal 5th circuit has been successful with bankruptcy since that Dallas’s judge’s ruling? Anything I have searched on I haven’t been able to find any easy way to find this out (I live in MS so I was looking at MS judges that do the cases for Jackson). If even one person has been successful I’d try it without an attorney provided having almost exclusively student debt is allowed to even declare bankruptcy (which is something else I haven’t been able to find out). All MS attorneys I have talked with will not help with bankruptcy with an adversarial proceeding.

Thanks again for answering my questions.

It sounds like you have really done your homework on this one.

The one option that I didn’t see you mention was chasing after forgiveness. With your current employment status, your monthly payments would be $0 on all of the IDR plans (I’d suggest REPAYE for you due to the interest subsidy.) Going this route, your loans would eventually be forgiven, it would just take a while and require yearly paperwork.

$8,000 in student loans LOL. Mary, that is chump change; people on this site routinely have $50,000 even $100,000+ in student debt. I WISH I only had 8K in loans…

I hate that schools do this. Awful, awful policy. If people need their transcripts to get a job, why would you block that? How does standing in the way of employment make sense as a strategy to get paid? Its wrong on so many levels. (However, if you are in California, there is a new law that just went into effect prohibiting the school from doing it)

Anyway, help from an attorney could be a good idea, especially if the SOL has passed. You should look for local attorneys that specialize in representing consumers in debt collection cases.