Hello and welcome to February 2021! As we plow on into 2021, there’s a whole lot going on, not the least of which is federal student loan debt news. The talk around the internet is all about federal student loan forgiveness. Everyone is wondering when it will happen and how much will be forgiven? Will it be $10k or $50k? Everyone wants to know how soon they can stop making their payments, for crying out loud!
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Well, first of all, no one is making federal student loan payments right now. Unless they want to, that is. The reason for that is the extension of the Coronavirus federal student loan relief measures that have been extended through September. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably already heard about that and the fact that interest isn’t accruing either. I know that’s a relief for a lot of borrowers out there, given the current state of the economy.
Now, I’m going to make some predictions that are really intended to be food for thought. Don’t take these predictions to the bank, I’m just taking a guess here. No one from the White House or Congress is calling me to tell me what their plans are for student loan debt in the next few years. Having said that, here are a few of my predictions about the immediate future of federal student loans.
- Student loans are not the first priority of government right now. Yep, that’s probably a real news flash. Seriously, I doubt there will be any movement on student loan forgiveness, or anything else related to student loans, until late summer, at the very earliest.
- Even when they do tackle student loan debt, I doubt there will be substantial forgiveness across the board. There are a lot of reasons I feel this way, not the least of which is the fact that our national debt has ballooned to $27 trillion dollars. Simply writing off millions of dollars of student loan debt doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do when our economy is in the toilet and our national debt is through the roof.
- When they finally do start working on student loan debt, I think their changes will be more about the programs and less about forgiveness. For example, their changes might consist of tightening up the current repayment plans and fixing Public Service Loan Forgiveness (which has been a stinker from the first round of forgiveness applications).
There are so many conflicting reports about federal student loans that it’s hard to make a conclusive statement on what you can expect in the coming months. I think that the extension of the Coronavirus relief measures has pushed federal student loan debt way onto the back burner. I’m kind of okay with that since the first thing we need to do is get this pandemic under control so everyone can get back to work!
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