Creative ways to defer student loans?

[shenxing]

A good friend of mine is in >100k of medical school debt. This is all accruing interest faster than she can possibly pay it off with her salary as a resident.

A lot of the loans are private and the interest can't be deferred. There are various ways to defer the government loans, the easiest seems if you are at least a half-time student.

Does anyone know if it is possible (or cost effective) to enroll in an online community college to get a deferment?

 

[MickiSue]

Join the Peace Corps. My son and his wife taught English to Chinese education students for two years. They got priceless memories, changed the lives of two years of young Chinese women, who never realized that women in the US had the freedom of thought that we do, and got two years of deferment on their loans.

Of course, they got paid a pittance, so it wasn't as though they were able to save enough to make a big payment when they got out.

 

[shenxing]

She's currently working as a resident (i.e. post-MD training), which means 60+/hr weeks with a misery salary.

The idea is to defer the loans with minimal effort and cost, by say enrolling in 6 credit hours of MATH101 online.

 

[jmw]

Math can be a good subject. If you already know the subject well, it's quite easy to get through courses that uses Pearson's online mylab/mastering series. Homework will take less than 20 minutes a week. Business math would be a great choice. Finite math and any descriptive stats class are easy too. Basic algebra is enough. You don't need to remember how to factor. I would avoid college level stuff like calculus since it can be time consuming to work through problems. Many online courses are much more time consuming than the classroom version, so be careful. Foothill college in California has lots of online courses. Some of them are really easy and not time consuming, especially if taken on a P/NP basis. Make sure you check ratemyprofessors before you enroll in anything.

 

[MickiSue]

If she's a resident, then she's technically still a student. She needs to contact the organization that gave her the loans and figure out why they are not crediting her with that fact, and get them to reverse the interest.

And don't get me started on the insanity of loaning money to young people, at significantly higher rates than banks can borrow it, in order to maintain an educated populace...

 

[shenxing]

AFAIK, you can't defer loans just because you are doing a residency/fellowship. You can either do an income based repayment (they take 10-15% of your meager income, which may not even cover the interest) or forbearance. Residents used to qualify for an economic hardship deferment, but of course the powers that be took that away.

So forcing the loans back into the student deferment (no payments + the federal government pays the interest) could be quite lucrative on >100k+ debts.

 

[shenxing]

Thanks jmw, Foothill looks really cheap at $31/credit hour. You need 6 credit hours to be considered half time for the purposes of the deferment. This may well prove to be worthwhile.