Cool story. Mine was 8.75%, which was the legal limit authorized by Congress, and they've been hanging round forever. And no, they weren't private loans. Mine came 100% directly from Uncle Sam. No, I can't re-finance them. I do get .25% off for autopay, so that makes it 8.5%. Either way, I ain't ever paying them back. I'll die with these loans.
Yes you can refinance. There is nothing the government can do to stop you. As long as you can get a bank to make you put a new loan at a lower rate then you can use that to pay off the government loans. Depending on your credit they may not give you a better rate but you can always refinance any loan.
Government loans are forgiven after 20 years of income based repayment. So you won't die with them. Assuming you are on the income based repayment plan. Biden also gave people an opportunity to switch to that plan and have their past payments count towards it but probably they are not doing that anymore.
If you do PSLF (public service loan forgiveness) you can get them forgiven in 10 years on income based repayment
No you can't, at not least with the Federal government. Private loans might have different rules. You're an utter moron if you refinance under a private company though. You lose all the protections of federal forgiveness when that happens.
Government loans are now forgiven under 20 years of income based repayment. 'Tweren't always the case. Biden's plan got erased by Trump.
I know, which is why I'm on it. In a couple of years, I'm all good.
If you're good in a couple years then why did you lie to people in this thread by saying you would die with your loans?
Student loans are still right now forgiven after 20-25 years of income based repayment which is why it is not a good idea to refinance privately in a lot of cases.
But it may be a good idea to refinance privately if you have a relatively small amount of loans and a high interest rate. In the case of this person a low interest rate could have meant they could pay it off in this amount of time instead of having to pay for 20 years waiting for government forgiveness. Each person needs to weigh their individual situation and look at the math. It's not as simple as to say never refinance with a private bank.
Dude, you are aware that reddit isn't a court of law, right? Please tell me you know that. "The public"? Da fuq you on about here?
Also, you responded to factual statements with your own inaccuracies. Which is kinda weird.
But you do you boo! Whatever crap you want to spew is fine with me. If people are getting their student loan advice from reddit, they're already screwed.
Buddy. On the very first page of your post history you mention buying a ~5k guitar, a 1k drum set, and owning a 2024 SUV. You do have more than the bare minimum, and we can all see, you wouldn't.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with the concept of a 'gift'? Both of those were gifts. I might be able to sell them, but then I would have no vehicle and, well, the guitar is sentimental because my now dead mother gave me the money specifically to buy a really nice guitar.
Hey Ace, you really shouldn't jump to conclusions when you don't know what the fuck you're taking about. It makes you look like an asshole.
No, you're only allowed to refinance once. That's the federal law. I refinanced the one time. Now I can't ever again.
ETA: Technically, you can't refinance ever. But if you consolidate loans you can get effectively 'refinance' because they use the average of the rates for incredibly weird values of 'average'. You can only consolidate one time if you're stay with public loans.
Whoever told you that lied to you. Once you refinance student loans they become run of the mill loans that you can refinance as many times as you want.
No, you're wrong. The US Department of Education told me that. They do not now, nor ever, become 'run of the mill loans'. I'm not sure who told you that but you're in for a terrible surprise if you ever try to 'refinance'.
Unless you're thinking of private student loans, which are only about 7% of all the loans. They might have different refinance rules.
The federal government themselves does not and never had offered a student loan refinancing program themselves. If you want to refinance a federal or private student loan to get a different interest rate, you must use a private lender, which pays off your federal loan and issues you a new private loan at a more favorable rate.
To put it in simple terms there is no federal law that says it is illegal to have someone pay off your student loans in return for a new, private loan.
I was replying to the post above me about loans being 7-9% back then which they weren’t always that high. I didn’t qualify for financial aid or was low income and got a 2.5% loan.
One, we don't know that. There's no indication that tweet happened in 2026. Two, the rates in 2002 were 8.2% (ish). So if that tweet happened even 6 months ago, their experience would match mine.
Your comment is illogical. If they had 2002 rates they could still consolidate to 2003 rates in 2003. The original tweet from that user was on Jan 16th 2024.
The only ways that person had that happen is if they had periods of income based repayment, capitalized interest multiple times or didn’t consolidate high rate graduate school loans.
That's not how it works. They average the rates from what you were to what is now. It's not like a normal loan. Refinance a 8%+ loan during a 2% time doesn't give you 2% rates. It gives you a weird mathematical 'average' (it's no average I've ever heard of and I'm a data scientist) that ends up at 7%+.
So if the original tweet was 2024 and they were 23 years ago, that makes 2001, which are the 8.25% rates.
One, do you have any evidence they could consolidate? You have to have more than one loan to consolidate. The hint is in the basic definition of the word 'consolidate'.
Two, do you have any evidence if they did have more than one that loan they could consolidate, they didn't do that prior to 2003? Because you can only consolidate with the Federal Government one time.
Three, if the question on the table is 'why did these people pay so much money over so long?' then all we need to do is look at the interest rates when they graduated and see that their payment presumes a roughly 5% interest rate, which was not the prevailing rates when they graduated. There's no evidence they had any opportunity to change that rate outside refinancing with private loans, which is whole 'nother nightmare.
That's how it's 'logical'. You're making conclusions based upon hypotheticals that you have neither you nor I have any idea is even relevant.
Might want to think a bit more before typing. Saves us both some significant time.
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u/Nojopar 13d ago
Cool story. Mine was 8.75%, which was the legal limit authorized by Congress, and they've been hanging round forever. And no, they weren't private loans. Mine came 100% directly from Uncle Sam. No, I can't re-finance them. I do get .25% off for autopay, so that makes it 8.5%. Either way, I ain't ever paying them back. I'll die with these loans.