You Can Do It! - Student Loan Forgiveness
By: David Gourley, CSLP®
This is an excerpt from David's weekly newsletter. If you find this content valuable and would like to see more like it and on financial planning for teachers, you can subscribe to the newsletter here: SIGN UP
If you haven’t been following along…
The student loan servicers are absolutely terrible.
No sugar coating it.
For the longest time, those working towards PSLF had to deal with FedLoan Servicing…
But they moved on and MOHELA replaced them.
At first this seemed like a good thing,
But it’s the same awful song and dance.
They have employees answering the phones who don’t know any of the rules or what they are talking about…
And it seems as though they just try to get people off the phone as quickly as possible.
Follow along for a tale of a success story in dealing with these student loan servicers!
There are two things that you need to know about me.
I’m extremely stubborn and insanely persistent.
There are times that these can be good characteristics to have…
And other times they just get me in trouble.
From a very young age,
I didn’t hear the words “no”…
I just heard, “Not this try” or “Not right now”.
I have a strange feeling that the adults in my life didn’t always enjoy that…
Including my parents, teachers, and coaches.
But it has also been an extremely useful gift…
And one that I try to pass on to the clients who work with me.
I started working with a family in May of this year.
The couple was both working towards PSLF,
And while the one of them was close according to his payment tracker…
The other had a long ways to go.
In the beginning…
She only had 66 credits towards PSLF (you need 120 for forgiveness).
When I reviewed her student loan data file and compared it to her work history…
We realized that she should have MANY more credits towards PSLF.
Between May and October,
She was able to file new paperwork…
And make several calls…
Which got her much closer to her goal of forgiveness.
She was now at 94 credits (months of payments),
But we were still going to have to come up with a plan to get the other 26.
We talked through her work history once again,
And she explained to me that her time at a private school has never been counted…
Even though they filed as a 501(c)(3) aka non-profit.
After our conversation,
She not only got the PSLF application re-signed by the vice-principal of the school…
But also got the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt paperwork from the school.
This not only took a TON of digging,
But lots of effort.
All for something that might not work!
I checked everything over and it looked good,
So, I instructed her to upload the entire packet into the MOHELA document upload.
Several weeks later…
She received notice that she now had 140+ credits,
Out of the 120 needed,
For Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
Basically, her loans are about to be forgiven!!!
There were so many times that she could have given up.
Last year, when she filed her paperwork,
They gave her 66 credits.
Now, one year later she has 140.
This is the power of persistence, being stubborn, and just not giving up.
This doesn’t just apply to crappy loan servicers and student loans.
This is the same thing as starting a family budget, trying to switch 403(b) vendors, moving money from one custodian to another…
And so much more!
You’ve got to be just stubborn enough not to quit when it gets hard…
And persistent enough to see it through until the end.
Last week I received a pretty good amount of replies to my question…
So, I’ll give it another go!
What is something that you need to be persistent about (financially) over the next month or two?
What do you need to do to make that become a reality?
Finally, if you need someone to give you a push towards your goal(s)…
Start by filling out the Financial Planning Application below,
And let’s schedule a call to find out if I can help!
As always, You Teach, We’ll Plan, You Retire
David Gourley
Financial Planner
David Gourley, CSLP® is a Financial Planner with Teach Plan Retire, an independent financial planning firm specializing in finance for teachers. He served for eight years as a high school mathematics teacher before transitioning into the financial services industry. He joined Teach Plan Retire in 2022 and his passion for serving as a fiduciary for teachers and a student loan planning expert runs deep, as his wife and several other family members have served as educators for years. He's a proud member of the Financial Planning Association of Greater Kansas City.