Ok so I have a question about my priorities with student loans. I have double checked the qualifications of the teacher loan forgiveness and I teach in a qualifying subject and school. You have to have 5 consecutive years and I am starting year 2 in a qualifying subject, and I plan to stay for at minimum the rest of the 5 years.
After the 5 years I can qualify for up to 17.5k in loan forgiveness. Ok to the details:
2 student loans:
1st- owe 6,391 @ 6.55% and minimum payment 85.
2nd- owe 6,824 @ 3.55 min payment 90.
Option 1: I continue to make minimum payments on both loans, I will have ~7k balance on the loans when I am eligible for the program. Free money is always great.
Option 2: Apply for a deferment which I should easily be eligible for, and is a yearly application. Could be higher reward but also seems risky because of added interest.
Before really looking into this program my plan was to attack that 6.5% loan and have it paid off in a year or two, and make min payments on the other with the low interest rate and the tax deduction.
Option 2 seems awesome, but what if the program goes away? Or they change criteria? Or I move to a position that does not match the criteria (most likely)?
Another question is I didn't see anything that said I could discharge 2 loans from two separate providers. Seems like I would be able to but I couldn't find anything mentioning it.
Thanks for your help!