You'll be notified or see a $0 balance
From this point on, your days of making monthly student loan payments are over. That is, unless, only a portion of your debt is canceled. If you still owe a remaining balance, you will still continue to owe monthly payments.
The researchers' model posits that cancelling student loan debt won't cause an astronomical amount of inflation. To be specific, there would be a very modest uptick as a result, perhaps 1.8-1.9 percent. In fact, the policy of debt cancellation could boost the GDP by an average of $86 billion to $106 billion per year.
"And if you assume there's a likelihood it's canceled, you're going to be more likely to take out more debt up front. That's going to give colleges more pricing power to raise tuition without pressure and to offer more low-value degrees."
Right now, anyone who receives student loan forgiveness between 2021 and 2025 will not have to pay taxes on any amount of student debt forgiveness.
Student loans can factor into your taxes as the interest is often tax deductible. So, you can reduce your tax bill if you include the amount of interest you've paid during the tax year.
If you receive full forgiveness, it'll close your loan accounts, which can affect your credit score slightly. You'll have one fewer account on your record and the average age of your accounts could decrease.
It penalizes hard-working Americans
We've already discussed how the poor and working classes are treated unfairly by this plan. But the unfairness extends to many middle class families as well who worked hard to pay off their student loans or their children's student loans.
1 Forgiveness is fundamentally unfair because it will ultimately be paid by taxpayers—many who have faithfully paid off their student loans, worked hard to pay for college, or chose not to go to college at all.
Consistent with predictions derived from theories of operant learning, perhaps forgiving relatively disagreeable or negative partners led to decreased self-respect and increased problem severity in those studies because it failed to discourage those partners from continuing their negative behaviors.
Student loan debt cancellation is essential to the financial wellness of millions of Americans. With student debt cancellations, people will be able to pay off other debts, purchase homes, and invest in their communities, futures, and the American economy.
Pros and Cons at a Glance
Pro 1: Student loan debt is slowing the national economy. Forgiveness would boost the economy, benefiting everyone. Read More. Con 1: Student loan forgiveness is an abuse of the loan system.
If your monthly payment does not cover the accrued interest, your loan balance will go up, even though you're making payments. Unpaid interest will also capitalize each year until your total balance is 10% higher than the original balance. This means you will pay interest on your interest.
Summing the likely consumption effects of the Administration's student debt relief and SAVE programs results in billions of dollars in additional consumption annually.
Another concern of forgiving student debt is “moral hazard,” the idea that students might make riskier choices if they think their debt will end up being forgiven, Jones said.
Some who oppose student loan forgiveness view education as a private commodity that benefits the person who purchases it."
Student loan debt slows new business growth and limits consumer spending. Broad student loan debt forgiveness may help boost the national economy by making it more affordable for borrowers to participate in it.
Student loan balances may seem stagnant due to the significant portion of payments going towards interest rather than the principal. Initially, a larger share of a student loan payment is allocated to interest, with a smaller amount reducing the principal.
Black adults are more than twice as likely than white adults to have student loan debt. The following graph includes federal and private student loan debt among all adults. On average, Black adults in the U.S. also hold higher student loan debt balances than borrowers of other races.
As of mid-July 2023, approximately 662,000 borrowers have qualified for forgiveness under the limited PSLF waiver.
If the debt forgiveness program is permitted to move forward, at a time when consumer spending already is high, it could lead to more inflation, Jones said.
It could cause long-term damage to your credit
Debt forgiveness programs almost always come with a significant impact on your credit score. When you stop making payments to your creditors while the settlement process is ongoing, your accounts will become delinquent, which will be reported to credit bureaus.
Student loans disappear from credit reports 7.5 years from the date they are paid in full, charged-off, or entered default. However, education debt can reappear if you dig out of default with consolidation or loan rehabilitation. Student loans can have an outsized impact on your credit score.
If you qualify for student loan forgiveness or discharge in full, and have applied if necessary, you will get a notification that you no longer need to make payments. In some cases, you may even get a refund, depending on the program you applied under.