Student Loans : News, Updates and Blog Posts

Happy February! While we still have to wait one more day to find out if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, you do not have to wait any longer to use FAFSA’s IRS Data Retrieval option! Starting today, February 1, students and parents who have filed their taxes can pull this information directly into their FAFSA.

In the past, filling out the financial information on the FAFSA has been a hassle since parents and students had to manually enter all of the information. Plus, this information would then need to be cross-referenced with the IRS by the financial aid office. This new IRS data retrieval option takes the some of the burden off of the families, allowing for an easy way to fill out the FAFSA.

If you haven’t filed your taxes yet for the year, no worries. You can select the “Will File” option, then when your taxes have been filed, log back into your FAFSA and update using the IRS Data Retrieval tool. To learn more about the IRS Data Retrieval option read, “IRS Data Retrieval Tool for FAFSA”

Remember, if you haven’t filed your FAFSA yet, get started! The earlier you apply the more likely you are to receive certain types of aid! If you need help, make sure to download our free FAFSA Guide ebook, or head on over to FAFSAOnline.com for step by step instructions to this year’s form!

Public Service Loan Forgiveness is a federal program that rewards public service employees for working in their chosen professions. As you might suspect, the reward is forgiveness of your student loan balance, an offer that many seek but few are able to take advantage of.

The Department of Education has recently made improvements to the PSLF process. While the requirements remain the same, they are more clear, and there’s a variety of new documentation to help get you through the application process.

If you’re not familiar with Public Service Loan Forgiveness here’s a brief overview:

Who is it for?

Employees who have worked for a qualifying public service organization for a minimum of 10 years. This does not mean your specific role at the organization needs to qualify, you simply must work for a qualifying organization.

Qualifying organizations include:

• Federal, state, or local government organizations/agencies
• Non-Profit organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501©(3) of the IRS guidelines

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Misty makes some excellent points in this video, especially for families who are applying for financial aid for the first time. She mentions that the FAFSA is free, and we can’t stress this enough! For families who have questions about the FAFSA, feel free to pose a question to the financial aid experts at FinancialAidForum.com, or check out some of the other common questions from families.
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It’s FAFSA season again, and thanks to FAFSAOnline.com, we’re providing students and families with a downloadable FAFSA Help Guide to the online form. This detailed guide will answer the most common questions about filing the FAFSA, as well as provide some useful tips to help you get the most financial aid. Best of all, it’s free!

What information can you find in the FAFSA guide?

• Filing your FAFSA before taxes
• Tax credit information
• Determining a student’s dependency status
• Defining a parent
• Using IRS Data Retrieval

And much more!
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The Department of Education has been making great strides in streamlining the often-confusing online FAFSA form. This year, students and parents should find it much easier to navigate through the process, as well as collect the information necessary to file the form.

Here’s what you can expect to find in the improved 2012-2013 FAFSA:

• Easier online navigation- The sections and questions have been reordered to make it easier to navigate. This best part of this is that the system now knows where you left off, so if you fill out the form over a few sessions, there’s no more searching for your next steps. Plus, it’s “skip logic” has been improved. This means that the system will eliminate unnecessary questions based on what you’ve already answered, making less work for you!

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I recently released my co-signer (my dad) from the burden of being responsible for my student loan payments. A co-signer is responsible for the payment of a student loan if the student who ‘owned the loan’ was unable to make payments, and deferment or forbearance wasn’t an option.

I thought this would be an easy, no ceremony (or notification) process needed. I didn’t realize how big of a deal this can be to your co-signer, the relief, and the adult-like responsibility you embody when you complete this process.
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This past Monday, President Obama held a roundtable to discuss the college affordability crisis. Attendees included Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and a dozen leaders in higher education from college presidents, to nonprofit heads. The list of attendees is noteworthy, because everyone in attendance has already made strides in making a college degree affordable and attainable for students.

For example, Dr. Robert Mendenhall, President of Western Governor’s University, was one of the presidents in attendance and has helped develop a tuition model unlike most others. Instead of charging tuition per credit, WGU charges a flat rate tuition for a six-month period. Here’s how WGU describes their tuition and costs:

“WGU treats all students as “full-time” and charges tuition at a flat rate regardless of the number of competency units (credit equivalents) attempted or completed by the student. The “standard term” is based upon a full-time enrollment of at least 12 competency units for undergraduate (bachelor’s) students and 8 competency units for graduate (master’s) students. Students who complete more or fewer units are charged the same tuition rates”

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The IRS data Retrieval tool is a helpful resource for many parents and students filing the FAFSA. The tool allows first-time and returning applicants to pull their tax data directly from the Internal Revenue Service in order to auto-fill the tax portion of the form.

Who can use the tool

The tool works for about 80% of all filers, but in some special cases, tax information should still be inputted manually. If you meet the criteria below, then feel free to use the tool!

Filers need:

• A valid SSN
• A filed tax return for the previous year
• An unchanged marital status as of December 31 of the prior year

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The Occupy Wall Street movement has been going on for a couple of months now, and as I’m sure many are aware, the subgroup of Occupy Student Debt has captured the media’s attention. With tuition at astronomical numbers, and unemployment at a high rate, many students and graduates are unable to repay their loans. Because of this, OSD has a new plan to encourage higher ed reform: refusing loan repayment. In the Inside Higher Ed article Refusing to Pay, Libby Nelson writes:

“Most experts, even those who agree with the movement’s aims, would describe these goals as unattainable. The theory behind the campaign is that if 1 million students refuse to pay, they would face minimal consequences due to safety in numbers. But many experts on student finance worry about the impact on anyone who stops paying: student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy; lenders — especially the federal government — will go to great lengths to go after debt; and some borrowers currently frustrated by their debt may not realize the impact of non-payment on future financial goals.”

Student loan default can have massive consequences to the borrower, and it’s important to know what your options are if you cannot afford your loan payments.
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Starting Saturday, November 19th, 2011 some of the major loan servicing websites of the Department of Education will be down for site maintenance and upgrade purposes. The downtime will begin at 3 am Eastern Time on Saturday and will end Sunday at 11 am ET.

Affected sites:

• Direct Loan Consolidation
• FAFSA4Caster
• FAFSA on the Web
• Federal Student Aid PIN
• National Student Loan Data System
• StudentLoans.gov
• TEACH Grant

If you’re trying to access these websites during the outage time, you will see an error message, and this is to be expected, so don’t worry!

For more information on this outage, view the Dept. of Education’s announcement.