My wife's loans have been in graduated repayment for two years and all of her payments are scheduled to go up starting in September. She has just over $60K of debt from undergraduate and graduate school spread across four or five loans (including one FFEL consolidation loan). She's never been late, never defaulted, etc... She is a public school teacher, so we'd like to consolidate her loans with a direct loan which would be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) after 120 payments (10 years). I plugged all of her information into the repayment calculator on StudentLoans.gov:
https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/mobile/repayment/repaymentEstimator.action
- Her exact amount owed (they pull this from their records): $60,530
- Our adjusted gross income: $94,843
- My total loans: $57,767 (I have not consolidated yet but will once my loans are out of grace)-I just graduated with my MA and am in public service as well.
- We are a family of four, living in NJ
This gave me a payment under the REPAYE program (which, as far as I understand it, is eligible for PSLF) of $142/month to start and a seperate payment for some of the loans which though not eligible for REPAYE, are eligible for standard repayment over 360 months. Basically the goal here is to consolidate all of hers with a direct loan to start the clock on the 120 payments and be done 10 years from now with a managable payment in the meantime. I just don't want to screw anything up in the process of consolidatiing since this process is so confusing and there seem to be a lot of possible missteps. Does it sound like this option will work for us?
