Please help with Private Loan???

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Looking for some help. I graduated about a year ago and found a job right away. Unfortunately, I was laid off. 

My problem is I oew around $90,000 in loans. 

Of that, roughly half is federal and they are cooperative with me in being able to put it in forebarance for economic hardship. 

The private loans however are not so considerate. 

The company is Firstmark services and is called the Mi-Loan program. I paid out of state tuition which really sucks. The story with them is I called the company and told them about my situtation. They said there is NOTHING they can do for me!

The loans have a maximum of 5 years forebarance. Since the first loan was in 2004, I had to start paying on it a few months ago. I also have another one from the same company that is due to be in repayment starting January. 

I do not have $ to pay the loans right now. 

What can I do???

Can i try and get a different lender?

What should I say to them?

Please help!

Thanks!

[BooBee]

I don't want to scare you but I think you're screwed!  This same exact situation happened to me about 6 years ago when I had a 10K private student loan and lost my job.  I couldn't pay the $300 per month they wanted and asked to put off payments for 6 months till I found a job.  Since I was going into my second month of being late the private lender wanted me to pay two months up front BEFORE they'd send an application for hardship and they told me I was not guaranteed protection from hardship.

As you can imagine I didn't have $600 to bring the account to good standing and it defaulted.  Now collections says I owe 3 times the amount of the original balance.  I even tried to call the department of education for help but the loan wasn't backed by the federal government so they could not help me get loan out of default.

If you are late I'd find out if the loan is backed by the federal government and see if they can help.  I have another 10k loan with the federal government and it's the best loan I've ever gotten cause they worked with me during my hardship and I've been making good payments for several years; it's almost gone.

Good Luck!