Lately I have been receiving calls regarding getting my outstanding student loans forgiven or reducing the payment. These are Parent Plus Loans that I took out for my kids education to make up for what their loans and scholarships didn't cover.

I am wary of someone offering me something for nothing. They say they are working for FAFSA but I don't buy it. Also, Parent Plus loans are not eligible for forgiveness, as far as I know. I feel like this is a scam in the making. Has anyone else run into this? Any thoughts?

Smells like a scam. Are you asking because you want it to be true? If it were me and my student loans were going to be forgiven, I wouldn't do it. I will not take from the American taxpayers to pay off a debt I willfully incurred.

The government or your private loan servicer aren't making cold calls just to help people gets their loans forgiven. This is either going to be a scam, or a sales call. They're trying to get something out of it from you.

If not an outright scam to gain your personal info or bilk you out of money, it's at least going to be a thinly veiled attempt to convince you to refinance/consolidate into a loan with them and/or pay them in exchange for their "help" in applying to get your loan forgiven or payments reduced through some program that's already available to you on your own. (Similar to the various "debt relief" companies.)

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Originally posted by xd45man:
If it were me and my student loans were going to be forgiven, I wouldn't do it. I will not take from the American taxpayers to pay off a debt I willfully incurred.

There's at least one legitimate loan forgiveness program out there: Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

In exchange for working in public service as something like a cop, EMT, teacher, public defender, etc., while fully paying on your loans for 10+ years, you can apply to have your remaining student loans forgiven. But it only applies to certain limited types of federal loans, along with other criteria.

It's not one of Biden's new schemes. It has been around since 2007, when George W. Bush was President. It was intended to help make careers in public service more attractive by offering additional benefits, since public service salaries typically can't compete with the private sector. Similar in concept to military members getting student loan forgiveness/repayment as a benefit for military service.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,

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FAFSA

link ConsumerFinance.gov

Keep an eye out for scammers. You might be contacted by a company saying they will help you get loan discharge, forgiveness, cancellation, or debt relief for a fee. This is a scam. You never have to pay for help with your federal student aid. Make sure you work only with ED and your loan servicers, and never reveal your personal information or account password to anyone. Verified emails to borrowers come from noreply@studentaid.gov, noreply@debtrelief.studentaid.gov, or ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com.

Here are some other warning signs that you may be dealing with a student loan cancellation scam and what to do if you are contacted by a scammer.

The easiest way to suss this out is to contact your loan holder. They will know the situation. Otherwise is is almost certainly a scam.

From what I've heard, the only loans that can be forgiven are the government ones.
Private lenders can't be ordered forgiven by the President, even if he wanted.

I would suspect that the loan company is misrepresenting what they will do and actually intend to sell you a rescheduled new loan that pays off the current one and may have a lower monthly payment, but for a much longer term, along with origination fees rolled into the loan principal, etc. Not exactly a scam, but definitely more in their self-interest than yours.

We got hit hard in 2008-2009 with the economic downturn, right before our daughters started college, and ended up having to take out Parent Plus loans for part of their education instead of the savings we had to use to survive. We continued paying down the PP loans during the COVID deferment, rolling the amount into the next loan as each was paid off, so it was a great feeling to get them paid off early and start putting that monthly amount toward paying off the mortgage a little earlier instead.