How can I get student loan forgiveness?

With the rising cost of college around the country, many students need to take out student loans to get through college. While student loans can help you get the education you need, paying them back can cause a lot of financial stress. If you’re struggling to pay back your student loans, there are a few paths you can take to student loan forgiveness. Here are the ways you can qualify for student loan forgiveness. 

Apply for the Income-Based Repayment Plan

This is the easiest path to lower student loan payments. Although you will still need to repay your student loans, you will likely be able to lower your monthly payment amounts to something much more manageable than you were initially paying. This repayment plan adjusts your payments to be no more than 15% of your discretionary income, which is the amount of money you make above the federal poverty line. Some recent graduates will make so little that they won’t have to pay anything, or may only need to pay a very small sum each month. 

Get a job in government or with a non-profit

If you are a full-time government employee or an employee for a non-profit organization, you will qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. With this program, your loans will be forgiven after you’ve made 120 qualified loan payments. This essentially means that your loans can be forgiven after 10 years. 

Get a job as a school teacher

If you are willing to teach in a low-income area, you can have your loans forgiven through the Teacher Forgiveness Program. You will need to work full time for five years as a teacher at a qualified school, and then the program will forgive your entire Perkins loans or up to $17,500 of your Stafford loans. You will need to serve those five years consecutively. 

Join the military

You can also get loan forgiveness by joining the military. Every branch of the military has their own unique student loan forgiveness options. The amount of loan forgiveness that you get will be dependent on your experience and rank in the military.