I Finally Get Me A Bailout

Bought a house too soon to get any kind of tax credit. My p.o.s. van broke down a few months before cash for clunkers. I’m not a banker or GM. But I did read this yesterday:

Fortunately, with the recent passage of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (.pdf file), also a creation of the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, people from a wide variety of careers can get their debt excused after 10 years of payments. People eligible for the program include teachers, government workers, social workers, law enforcement officers, nonprofit workers and those who hold jobs at public universities and public hospitals. . . .

The good news for those who are eligible for this program? If a graduate works full time in his or her respective field for 10 years, student loan debt will be forgiven at the end of that period.

Because I went to law school and then became a teacher, I could pay on my loans for ten years and still owe close to the original amount. (And that’s with most of my education paid by scholarship; I know plenty of folks with six figures of law school debt.) Now? In just under eight years – my two prior years count towards the ten – I’m student loan debt free. I’ll end up paying just over a third of what I would have without the program. In fact, the amount I actually pay will be less than the principal I originally owed.

Even better than that, when I sign up for the program, my loans will be consolidated at a lower interest rate and on a longer payment schedule. In other words, I can still string out the payments for 25 years even though if I stay on the job and make all the payments for ten, the balance goes buh-bye. That’s fifteen years worth of payments erased. So not only is this going to save me the cost of a very nice car in student loans, I’ll be paying about twenty five per cent less each month. Cheaper payments and less overall debt. Sweet.

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