Adult Services

Are You Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness? Now is the Time to Check! (Before 4/30/2024)

Guest Blog

By Cristy Moran: Published on
Adult Services

This guest blog post is authored by Kyra Hahn, Older Adult Services Librarian at Denver Public Library, Hampden Branch. Kyra has presented on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) for librarians and library staff at various conferences and for various professional associations including, most recently, at the Public Library Association’s 2024 annual conference in Columbus. She generously shares her slides for How To Get Student Loan Forgiveness PLA 2024  along with critical information about the PSLF program and impending deadlines.

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If you’ve been watching the news over the past few months, you’ve likely seen or heard coverage related to student loans and forgiveness programs associated with them.  Even the President of the United States has made mention of student loan debt in speeches and press releases.  There are a lot of changes and reforms going on with student loans, current and for the near future, to make student loan programs easier to understand, access, and navigate for borrowers.  Please make sure your contact information is up to date with Student Aid and your loan servicer to receive notifications about any changes to your accounts.

Have you ever wondered if any of these programs will help you with discharging student loan debt?   Are you suffering from information overload?  Have anxiety about student loans and don’t know where to begin?  I’ve been there myself and have learned through experience that facing the challenge and doing a little something, is better than doing nothing.  I find progress is reassuring and makes me feel a little better.  April is a great time to get your finances together as we recognize Financial Literacy Month and we’ve just finished with filing taxes.  A great place to start learning about Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Forgiveness by exploring at Studentaid.gov, which is the primary source of information.  I’m sharing some ‘need-to-know’ time-sensitive deadlines, changes in-progress, and resources that student loan borrowers need to be aware of in 2024, fresh from the recent PLA Conference in Columbus Ohio.

Here are 2 important deadlines:

  • If you have federal student loans that are not Direct Loans, the deadline to consolidate loans to Direct Loans is 4/30/2024.  Consolidating by the deadline will allow borrowers to maximize qualifying payment counts for loan forgiveness programs by applying the oldest loan date applied to all of the loans within the consolidation.  The original deadline was 12/31/2023 and has been extended once.  I do not expect the deadline to be extended again.  Read for more information.
  • PSLF Form Processing Delays – Updates are being made by Dept of ED to move towards a streamlined single login process for student loan information in the future.  There will be a hiatus for PSLF form processing between May-August 2024.  Read for more information.

There’s more updates related to Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income-Driven Repayment Forgiveness programs within the PLA presentation slides.  There’s timely resources via QR code worth checking out to help for a variety of situations including Parent Plus loans!

Cristy Moran
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