My partner and I have about 60k in student loans and haven’t been paying even though they started back in October. I’m waiting to see if maybe we just shouldn’t. I remember there being chatter about how Nelnet and other loan holders had like laid off a bunch of people during the pause and hadn’t hired them back, and the system is overloaded and fucked, and how are people suddenly going to pay a big monthly expense anyway, etc etc. But if people were to not pay them, I feel like the media would not want to perpetuate that narrative and build it into something real by spreading the word so to speak. So I don’t know if there’s a way to gauge is people are actually paying them? Does anyone know?
I regretfully resumed payments, but only because I'm very close to the 20-year end-of-plan thing with IDR/IBR. If it gets forgiven this year, then I won't have to pay taxes on the forgiven portion as income, which would be great.
And if it doesn't get forgiven this year, then idk what I'll do. Count how many payments to forgiveness versus how much it'll fuck me on taxes and figure out what's the best way to go, I guess.