I recently had the pleasure misfortune to spend several hours on the phone bouncing back and forth between the Department of Education and my student loan servicer, Mohela. I wish I were being hyperbolic or exaggerating when I say “several hours” but, alas, I am not.
To give some background context, I graduated with my PhD in 2013 with six figures worth of student loan debt. I landed my current job, a full-time job eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) in July 2015. However, I did not plan or expect to wait ten years to have my loans forgiven. Instead, I set to work with a vengeance trying to pay them off ASAP.
This proved harder than it sounds. Even with paying over $1,000/month, the interest on my loans (most in the 6.5% range) was so large that my payments didn’t even cover the incurring interest. And so my loan balances continued to grow.
