Tampa Student Loan and Bankruptcy Attorney Blog — June 19, 2024
The Biden administration’s overhaul of the Department of Education has put a lot of things on hold during the pandemic, but has created a number of good programs and fixed existing programs that should be taken advantage of now.
If your student loans are in default for instance, while rehabs basically weren’t available during Covid, there is a new program ending September 30 called Fresh Start. Enrolling your federal loans in Fresh Start will both cure the default and give you credit during the pandemic for Income Driven Plans. If you’ve been waiting to cure a default – that time is now until September 30.
If you had a garnishment that you are waiting to restart before taking action or contacting us, the On Ramp expires September 30. That was the government’s decision to halt negative reporting and collection actions for anyone who hasn’t made payments since the pause ended last fall. That means garnishment and other collection action will restart in early October. It’s best to utilize Fresh Start now to bring the loans out of default and get the most credit possible during the pandemic. Fresh Start didn’t used to exist and it has made rehab unnecessary to get out of default. That means no need to catch up payments or make 9 on time payments to cure a default.
If you have the older FFEL loans, the deadline to consolidate them is June 30 – in order to turn them into Direct loans and get Income Driven credit without losing any prior IDR credit you already have in place.
If more than one year has gone by and you haven’t talked with us about your student loans, please reach out to us by calling 813-258-2808 or email us at info@christiearkovich.com. Whatever was recommended to you before (if anything), may look very different now. We want to make sure that you take advantage of the new stuff to end your loans!
