With looming student loan payments each month, borrowers may find it tempting to skip a payment or two, especially if their payoff date is being counted in years and not months. While you might forget that you missed a payment once or twice or were late by merely a few days, your future lenders are… Continue reading Defaulted Student Loans: Be Careful Not to Make This Huge Mistake….

I have been offered to settle a student loan that I co-signed and that later went into default. The offer is that once the settlement amount is paid, they will report to all the national credit reporting agencies that the charged-off loan has been repaid for less than the full balance. (This is besides reporting… Continue reading Fixing your credit score hurt by a student loan default

The advice for cosigning a loan for a family member or friend is always virtually the same: Don’t do it, and if you do, understand the consequences if something goes wrong. But what if you ignore the advice and cosign, and the loan goes south for reasons beyond your control? Although there is no database… Continue reading You Cosigned a Student Loan, They Defaulted. What Now?

Jennifer’s pay stub is downright depressing. It’s bad enough that she earns less than $11 an hour as a single mom in Wisconsin. Her gross pay of roughly $800 every two weeks would challenge anyone trying to run a household, but that’s not the half of it. Jennifer is one of millions of Americans facing… Continue reading Can Student Loans Take 40% Of My Pay Check?

At 40 years old, Tara Raskie knows she’ll be buried with her student loan debt. A Colorado Springs single mom with daughters who are 19 and 17, Raskie owes $87,000 in federal student loan debt and $7,000 in Colorado student loan debt. For her state debt, a 25 percent garnishment is automatically taken from her… Continue reading Colorado Springs mother will die in student debt default

Media reports are full of headlines about the perils of student debt and how it threatens to be the next economic bubble. Reports cite outstanding student debt eclipsing that of credit cards and auto loans, default rates rising to their highest level in recent years and delinquency rates higher than any other form of consumer debt. But… Continue reading Get the Facts About Struggling Student Loan Borrowers

New federal rules that penalize colleges for excessive student loan defaults offer a powerful incentive for schools to educate students on the complexities of the federal student loan program, including the crucial fact that they can delay or make partial payments if they get into financial trouble. Keeping loan default rates low, a new study… Continue reading How to Control Student Loan Defaults

With many young graduates carrying anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, students are currently facing a mountain of a financial challenge. On top of already high numbers, student loan debt is a sticky kind of debt, as in it stays with the borrower or cosigner no matter what.… Continue reading What Happens if You Default on Your Student Loans?

The annual cost of college education has risen by 130% in the past 20 years, according to the College Board, so it’s no surprise so many of us have student loan debt. Finding out if you can afford your student loan payments is an important preliminary step, but making the payments happen can prove even… Continue reading How to budget for student loan payments

Private student lenders and a federal regulator disagree over the proper statistics to gauge repayment problems in the student-loan market—a debate that has become important of late because lenders argue the private sector has a better track record of student-loan performance. The months-long dispute, conducted via public reports and press release, news conference and via Twitter… Continue reading How Many People Don’t Pay Their Student Loans?