Student Loan Repayment & Refinancing for Physicians
Jan 15, 2026
Description
This educational webinar covers the major changes happening in federal student loan repayment, particularly focusing on the phase-out of the SAVE plan and introduction of new repayment options. The presenter, Joe Price Gault from Juno, explains the RAP plan, changes to income-driven repayment plans, and the timeline for existing plan eliminations by 2028. The session covers federal loan forgiveness programs including PSLF, which remains intact, and discusses when refinancing makes sense versus staying in federal programs. Key topics include grace periods for new graduates, consolidation versus refinancing, eligibility requirements, and common mistakes to avoid. The webinar is particularly relevant for medical professionals and recent graduates navigating their student loan strategy, with emphasis on understanding the trade-offs between federal protections and private refinancing benefits.
Okay. So we'll go ahead and get started. Wanna welcome everybody to the webinar here, talking about student loans and student loan repayment today.
And then if you have any kind of questions throughout, the should be a a q and a feature at the bottom in your box there. Might be able to use the chat feature as well, either one, but feel free to drop your questions as they come about, and we will answer them. At the end of the webinar, there'll there'll be time for and a. So allow me to pull this up here. One second.
Okay. Alright. So that's it. We're gonna be as I said, talking about navigating student loan repayments and what this looks like, some different changes, etcetera, that have come about in the student loan space. So just as a disclaimer, Juno is not an investment adviser, financial analyst, etcetera. If you were to refinance as well, we lose any kind of protections as it pertains to federal student loans. So something just to keep in mind.
So what we'll cover today is the new wrap plan that's coming out this summer for federal loans as well as changes to other income driven repayment plans. If you are finishing medical school or residency, what to expect when loans enter repayments, how federal repayment plans, those remaining, and federal forgiveness works, and any kind of changes with that. And then a little bit about when refinancing makes sense and timing, and then we'll wrap with just some common mistakes, best practices, and things to look out for as it comes to thinking about your repayment strategy over time.
Just a quick intro of myself. My name is Joe Price Gault. I lead the repayment and refinance division at Juno. Been in this space a little over six years and the person worked with, at this point, a little over twelve thousand borrowers.
I've counseled on just under a billion dollars in student loan debt. So I've seen every situation that's out there and, you know, love helping borrowers and figure this out, worked with a lot of physicians to help them fit this into their lifestyles and, you know, find the best strategy for them to repay their loans over time. Okay. So we'll start off a little bit with if you are newly graduated, and I realize this might pertain to everyone on the webinar.
But if you are somebody that is finishing, you know, medical school and you are in that space, you know, when you graduate, you have a grace period. You have a six month window during which time, you know, until repayment begins if you don't consolidate your loans. So, what that looks like is, you know, during that time period, you have to think about how you'll repay your loans, what repayment plan you will enroll in. Private loans as well typically have anywhere from six to nine months of a grace period before the repayment kicks in depending on the agreement of that private loan.
So during that period, you don't have to pay on the loan. You might want to because interest does accrue still, so the balance is going up every month until you enter repayment.
So any kind of payment you make can help mitigate that extra cost. With federal loans, the only way to get out of the grace period is to consolidate. So, you know, that's when you bring all of your loans together. We'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation here.
But, basically, it's bringing all of your loans together into a new federal loan, and it has certain benefits there. And that also allows you to pursue things like PSLF sooner than if you wait out the grace period. And then you can also refinance during the grace period if you would want to, and many private lenders will match an existing and remaining grace period. So you can take advantage of a low rate while still maintaining the right to not have your payment kick in right away.
So that's definitely a nice feature. It's just something that you would take advantage of.
So income driven repayment for federal loans is is exactly as it sounds. It's a repayment plan that's based on your income.
It's not directly tied to the balance of the loan. Now in some cases, the plans take into account the balance, such as income based repayment. Income based repayment has a certain apt amount at which the payment can't go above based on your loan balance and interest rate. There's a new plan coming out called the repayment assistance plan that bases payments solely on your income. It's not tied in any way to the balance of the loan. It's just simply a correlation of your income over time from your taxable adjusted gross income.
So the save plan. This is a plan that a lot of folks have been in for two, three years now. If you're in the save plan still, if you're on this call, you don't have a payment due on your loan still, but you are accruing interest on the loan. Right? So this plan came about back in twenty twenty three to replace what was then the revised page of our plan. No payments have been made on this plan since summer of twenty twenty four, so going on about eighteen months now.
And the time spent on this plan during that pause doesn't count for forgiveness. So if you're somebody who's pursuing public service loan forgiveness, that time does not traditionally count. So that is something to keep in mind there. The interest did kick back on in August of last year.
So at this point, you should have received some sort of notification about that, and you've been able to remain a plan without making a payment. Right? So you might have received a bill. A lot of borrowers received a bill by accident from their servicer.
You didn't have to make a payment. The official date at which you'll be kicked off of this plan, if you don't voluntarily move into something else, has not been formally revealed. There's language in the bill that was passed last summer that borrowers will be moved off of this plan by July of twenty twenty eight, but there's a lot of expectations that may happen sooner. So if you're somebody who is staying on this plan to take advantage of not having to make a payment, that's perfectly fine, but you do want to keep in mind that you you might abruptly be told or moved to go into a different repayment plan with the government.
So that's something that, you know, we can help with through Juno. One of ways we help borrowers is just simply navigating federal repayment options and finding a good alternative to save, and then we do that through free consultations.
So starting this summer, they're going to begin unwinding existing plans. So if you're a new graduate and you consolidate your loans after this summer, then you will have two options. You'll have this new wrap plan, and you'll have, income based repayment. Older borrowers, so if you had if you entered repayment prior to July first coming up this year, if you're already in repayment and you're not taking out any additional loans, you still have access to some older plans, the pay as you earn and the income contingent repayment plan, but those two plans are going away.
So the top half of this slide, pay as you earn income contingent and save, those plans will all be gone by July of twenty twenty eight. And at that point, all borrowers will need to choose between one of these two plans. And I apologize. Somebody said earlier, if you are graduating after this year and you consolidate after July of this summer, then you'll only be eligible for the wrap plan.
So going forward, most borrowers will have choice between two, but eventually, borrowers will only have a choice of that wrap plan for income driven repayment.
So income based repayment, the way that this plan works is that it is ten percent to fifteen percent of what's called your discretionary income. So what they do is they basically take your adjusted gross income on your taxes, and then they take off an additional amount for your family size and the poverty level amount of income for your state. And then the remaining number is what your payment is based on. Okay?
The important piece is when you borrowed your first loan. Okay? Because there's two versions of the income based repayment plan. There's an old version, and there's a new version.
And if you borrowed a loan at all prior to July of twenty fourteen, and then you had a balance you borrowed again after that date, you're only eligible for income based old repayment, which is fifteen percent of your income. K? And not to get too deep into the details there. Again, there's some that we can kind of look through your specific situation one on one and see how this applies to you.
But the takeaway is just simply that these plans are more expensive than, say, right, these are more expensive probably than other repayment options you may have seen in the past. So the big thing is, you know, unfortunately, you'll probably expect your payment to go up in some degree. So it's all about finding the right repayment plans. The other important piece is that this plan does accrue interest if your payment is less than the interest on the loan.
So if you have a large loan balance, right, if you're in the couple hundred thousand dollars and your payment doesn't cover all the interest monthly, this plan backs up. The the balance goes up and that unpaid interest accrues. So it's important to keep in mind. K?
And this slide just recaps a lot of of what we talked about there.
The other option is this new repayment assistance plan. So, again, it's a brand new plan. It's coming out for the first time this summer. It's not available for enrollment yet. It will be available for enrollment later this year.
As of right now, the one important nuance in the language of this plan is that you cannot if you're someone who's eligible for both wrap and the income based plan that we just covered and you choose the wrap plan, as of right now, the language says that you can't later on go back and choose the income based plan. That's potentially going to change, but as of right now, that is the way the language reads. So it's important to understand that, right, whenever you're making a decision on which repayment plan to choose. The other piece is that this plan qualifies for public service loan forgiveness if you're pursuing that path. This also eventually forgives on its own, but it's after thirty years of payment.
It's a very long time you have to have a balance out there, three hundred and sixty payments, and still have a balance remaining to forgive. So it takes a long time. The other piece is that the payment is uncapped. So if you're a physician, you know, if if, say, you eventually own a medical practice of some sort and your income is high six, low seven figures even, a plan like this could be incredibly expensive because it's ten percent of your adjusted gross income.
So one of the things you wanna consider when you're looking at repayment plan is payment today, but then also future earnings. Right? And what does that look like? If you're starting out right now making less, but, you know, you have plans in five, six, even ten years of, you know, making well into the six or seven figures of income, this could be a bad long term strategy.
Right? And, again, that's where we can help you kinda navigate and understand what that does look like year by year because you might wanna eventually refinance. You might wanna choose something like this upfront to keep payment low while you're starting out. But then the way it works is every twelve months, you update your income with the government.
So your payment adjusts every twelve months every year based on your income for that past year.
Eventually, we'll catch up to that higher income. So all those to keep in mind, this is, again, designed to be a general overview where we can, you know, talk more one on one as it applies to your specific situation. And this chart is just designed to give an idea of between, essentially, the three plans available to wrap and then the two versions of IVR, old and new, what it looks like at income level. Right?
For most borrower or for most individuals on this call, rather, you're probably in that hundred and ten thousand or more bucket. If not now, you will be at some point. And that's where, you know, you can see that IVR old is, more expensive than wrap, but IVR new is the cheapest. So if you're able to qualify for IVR new, right, that can oftentimes be a good option, but we wanna look at as well your overall loan balance.
Right? If monthly, this is the cheapest, but like we said, this plan doesn't cover unpaid interest. So if your balance you make a monthly payment, but your balance still increases because you're not covering all the interest, That might not be good. The wrap plan, this new plan, if your payment is less than the interest, the government covers all that interest monthly.
So that can be a really advantageous reason to take advantage of that.
The PSLF.
So if you're not familiar with the program or if you are pursuing the program, the good news is the PSLF is not going away. Okay? There's been no indications at this point. It was put in place by congress.
Congress alone would have to overturn it, which at this point, there's no indication of. So that's good news for borrowers. And the new repayment plan will count, the new wrap plan, if that's a good plan for you for this. And existing payments made on older income driven plans that are going away also continue to count.
So you won't lose credit for anything. Okay? The only piece that doesn't count is that time spent in that save pause over the past eighteen months. That technically doesn't count.
There's what's called a PSF buyback that we won't get into that essentially might provide an option. Again, if that's something that would apply, it's it's something we could talk more one on one about. With PSLF, though, you have to be on an income driven plan. Right? So the biggest thing is, you know, again, if you're on a plan that's going away, when looking at the plans you'll have switch into to continue this because you have to be on income driven, it might be more expensive. Your payment might go up. So we would wanna see, you know, what the remainder of your payments look like just to ensure that PSLF will still be a good path if your payments go up and give you an idea of, you know, still what that estimated total cost and forgiveness amount looks like.
To qualify and pursue PSLF, you have to fill out paperwork ideally on an annual basis, you know, certifying your employer and making sure that your employment records stay up to date with the part of education, and then also recertifying your income driven repayment plan on time.
Common question is if you take any kind of breaks in work over that ten years. Right? So you take a maternity or paternity leave or you take a year of fellowship that doesn't isn't that a nonprofit, and so that period of a year isn't qualified. That doesn't reset your payment clock when you go back to nonprofit work.
Okay? At a minimum, you have to pay for ten years per PSLF, a hundred twenty payments. You can pay longer. So if you have a year or two that's nonqualified because you weren't working for a an employer at that point that qualifies, that's fine.
Doesn't have to be consecutive. Right? You just have to cumulatively of all of your payments made, a hundred and twenty of those have to be qualified to PSLF. A qualified payment is it was an income driven payment that was made that month while you were employed full time at either a nonprofit or a government entity.
And then there's other loan forgiveness. So these income driven plans, right, if you're not pursuing PSLF, which is ten years, then the income driven plans do forgive, think we had mentioned briefly earlier, after anywhere from twenty to thirty years. Depends on the plan. It's a long time to get to forgiveness.
The other caveat is that PSLF, the balance forgiven is tax free from a federal tax perspective. Maybe subject to state income tax, but it's not taxed from a federal perspective. The income driven plans, if you pursue forgiveness while not working at a nonprofit, you just simply stay on them until the plans eventually do forgive the remaining balance. That remaining not forgiven is taxes income.
So that can be a very large taxable event, you know, in the five and six figures depending on the balance that you have forgiven over time. And so that's something you wanna plan for. Right? These can be great plans to use if that makes sense in your situation, but you wanna make sure that that's the best path and that you know what that taxable event will cost so you can plan for that over time.
So now let's kinda flip gears. That's federal repayment. Let's flip gears over here to refinancing and private payment.
And so refinancing, taking out a brand new loan to pay off your existing student loans. These are all still student loans. Okay? So the refinancing, the funds can only be used to pay off student loans.
You can't take out extra to include any, like, credit card debt, car loan debt, things like that. So it's still a student loan. It's just a different type, essentially, of student loan. You can refinance both federal and private loans together.
They become one single private loan going forward. You can continue to refinance that private loan again as rates fall. Right? Throughout the course of this year, you'll likely receive communication from us through Juno as rates continue to fall and refinance options become available, but you can never return to the federal side.
Right? So you give up income driven repayment. You give up PSLF. You just wanna make sure if you are refinancing a federal loan that you don't need access to any of those programs.
Refinancing consolidation, two terms that are commonly used one or the other, and they do mean different things. Refinancing is privatizing a loan, brand new loan, terms and rates based on your credit and income profile. Consolidation is a government option for federal loans only that takes all of those individual federal loans. If you funded your medical degree through federal loans, likely have fifteen, maybe even twenty loans, brings them all together into one single federal loan for that balance.
And then the interest rate is just the weighted average interest rate of all those loans rounded up to the nearest one eighth of a percent. So, basically, you don't get a break. The the interest cost is effectively the same. It just simply combines all the loans into one loan.
And there there's reasons for doing it, but it's just simply different from refinancing.
Eligibility for refinancing, typically good to great credit. You know, the lenders like to see at least a six fifty. What I always say to you, though, is that it matters why your score is what it is. Right?
Two borrowers can both have a six hundred fifty credit score. If borrower one is simply new out of school and they don't have a lot of repayment history on their loans, but they paid everything on time, they might be at a six fifty because they just simply started repaying. They're building their credit profile. Borrower two has been out for twenty years and has a lot of missed and late payments, and it's a very different six fifty.
You know, a bank might have a harder time trusting repayment for that. So the credit score is important, but why your credit score is that number, your credit history? Excuse me. That's also very important.
Income or future income, we can use job offers up to six months in advance. Generally, at least thirty five thousand is what is looked for. And then there are options as well if you're an international student loan borrower on an f one visa. There are options as well to refinance with certain lenders.
Timing for refinancing is generally up to six months before you graduate or already graduated. Again, if you do it before you graduate, you need to have a job offer. Refinancing does require proving income to justify the refinance, either pay stubs, tax returns if you're a ten ninety nine, or a side job offer.
Some key reasons to refinance, and then we'll also talk about the opposite of key reasons to hold off. But you can reduce your interest rate and pay it off faster. Right? So if you again, if you're not going for income driven, if you're not going for forgiveness, if you're gonna pay your loan off in full and you can refinance and get a lower rate that allows you to save on interest, take advantage of it.
It's just money back in your pocket. There's no fees on refinancing student loans other than the state of Florida charges a documentary stamp tax that is specific to that state. It's a very cheap cost, though, overall. It's not something they should deter from refinancing.
But if you do live in Florida, you'll it's just a little nuance there. Key reason number two is to release a cosigner. A lot of times if you're going to school, if you have a private loan or even if you refinance early on and you need a cosigner to get the refinance, refinancing again is a new loan. So it doesn't really look at the existing loan setup.
It's a new loan. It's a new opportunity to have a a refi or to have just yourself on the loan.
Moving from variable to fixed rates. Variable rates were very popular, four to five years ago when rates were very low. They have since crept up. They're starting to kinda creep back down, but variable rates fluctuate.
So if you have a large balance and you chose a long term variable interest rate for your loan, it might be time to switch out of that. Right? You might wanna move it into a lower fixed rate that never changes until that loan is paid off. And then lastly is adjust your monthly payment.
Right? Say that you can't afford the full amount and you need to just stretch this thing out to a longer term to get that payment down. Or on the flip side, maybe you're in a spot where you're done with residency and fellowship. You're now making two or three times your fellowship income, and you can pay this thing off in five years.
You wanna get that lower interest rate. Refinancing allows you to do that.
But there are reasons to hold off. Right? Number one is if you simply can't beat the rate. Right? If you have a say you refinance your loan, if you're on this call and you refinance back in twenty twenty when, your fifteen year rates at that point were in the the twos in some cases. Right?
Your five year rate today isn't gonna be as low as that. So in some cases, you just might wanna still stay with the loan you have even if it is longer term if that rate is good, and you can just simply pay it off faster if you want to. PSLF and federal, Cannot overemphasize this enough. If you are pursuing loan forgiveness, if you're taking advantage of some federal program at this point that you need to hang on to, do not refinance. That will permanently eliminate that, and you really wanna be careful with that.
And then as well, lower income. Right? So there are options if you're in residency. There's what's called residency refinance. So there are options for lower income dependent situation. But if you simply just cannot afford the full payment on the loan at a given point, and so you are using income driven repayment, you know, federal options are good for that.
So pass through that. So taking a little bit of a look at what you could save, and this is just for illustrative purposes. These interest rates aren't reflective of anything in particular at this point at least. But, basically, when you go to school, the rates tend to be higher than when you graduate.
Okay? And the reason is because when you're going to school and taking out that loan, there there's a lot of unknowns. Right? You don't you haven't completed the degree yet.
You don't have a job yet, so the bank doesn't know what you're gonna make your ability to pay. And, typically, you have a lower credit score because you're still establishing your financial history. When you graduate, you have a job. Right?
Typically, in the six figures.
You've completed the degree, which is the overall purpose of the loan that you took out, and you probably have at least a little bit of a higher credit score because you've had loans for a couple of years now on your credit report. So you're less risky. A bank has ability to really evaluate their true chance of getting that loan paid back. As a result, you get a lower interest rate.
If you have federal plus loans from the past couple of years, their shares are pretty high. So, you know, eight, nine percent in some cases, I myself had plus loans from these past couple of years for the government.
Good time to definitely look at refinancing that because the interest rates now are, you know, in some cases, half of that if they're in the fours.
So it it's just an opportunity to save. Right? Again, evaluate against federal. If you're pursuing forgiveness or different things, the interest rate doesn't matter as much because you're going for a forgiveness option.
But any kind of repayment in full and, like, monthly paying down the principal balance strategy, you definitely wanna look if you have loans from the past couple of years. We have some resources on the Juno website that just help really paint the picture. Right? You can put in your existing loan information and then your new loan with the interest rate that you pull, and it'll show you just real simply what you could save.
Right? And so it just helps kinda paint that picture of, okay. Is refinancing really worth it? Is it worth going through the process, which is a very easy process?
If you could save almost fifteen thousand dollars, it's probably worth an hour of time, you know, on the lender's website and some paperwork to put fifteen thousand dollars back in your own bank account at the end of the day.
So some common mistakes to avoid, things to think about. Number one is going directly to a lender. You know, we're we're in a time and place now where marketplaces exist. You know, Juno is a marketplace, and there's others out there as well to where the bank they ultimately end up with, whether it's Ernest, SoFi, Laurel Road, whomever it might be, they exist on marketplaces.
So you can fill out the same form you'd fill in those individual websites. You can fill it through marketplace and have all of those options pulled back instantly. So one form, multiple rate makes it easy to shop. It's always a soft credit pull.
Checking your rates never impacts your credit, so there's really no reason not to get as many quotes as possible, especially when we're talking about the amount of loan balance you're looking to pay it back.
You can also refinance again. So a lot of folks in this year, especially, right, rates are supposed to keep coming down. That's the talk of the economy. And so a lot of times we'll hear, I wanna wait for the rate drop.
I I it's not low enough yet. I wanna keep waiting. You can always refinance it again. Okay?
If rates drop again and you qualify, you can always refinance that thing a month later. Right? You can refinance as soon as a month later. You can refinance at any point again.
And so but but don't wait for that because it's a lot of uncertainty. Interest rates are tied to a lot of different factors that while the expectation is a rate drop, if for whatever reason rates increase and now you missed out on a a dip, you know, it's gone. So always take advantage of savings when it's available, and then just simply check updated offers to make sure that there's never something better available for you. Some strategies to keep in mind, biggest one is evaluate your budget and and really consider these repayment options carefully.
Okay? When you're starting out or if you're refinancing in residency, especially, you know, a five year term looks really attractive, but you wanna make sure you can afford that. Okay? You you can always pay your loan off early.
There's never a prepayment penalty on the student loans and the especially the lenders that we work with. So if you choose a longer term to have some flexibility and to have some breathing room, you could throw extra money at it and pay it off early and go through the principal balance. You just don't wanna get yourself into a spot where all of your income is tied up into that required monthly loan payment, and now you can't buy a house. You can't get a car loan.
It can just make it messy. And the only way out of that is refinancing again. And if you can't qualify, now we're really in tight spots. So just be careful, right, when you're looking at the refinance option.
And with that, you know, just consider the longer options. And, again, evaluate refinancing again. If you can get a better rate, it's a free process. It never costs anything outside the state of Florida.
A small ancillary cost anyway. To refinance again, take advantage of it. So real quick, just on Juno and how we work. So, Juno, I said, we are a marketplace.
We help borrowers find the best possible offers for refinancing. So we do free consultations one on one. You meet with either myself or one of the teammates I've done that we've done, honestly, over twelve thousand of these consults with borrowers over the years, and we help you determine what is the best path. Right?
If you should stay federal, we'll tell you that. Stay federal. If you should refinance, though, we'll help you navigate that, and we'll show you the numbers as to why that makes sense. Right?
We'll help you understand why the recommendation is what it is. With refinancing, though, we negotiate better deals than you can get with the banks directly. So with some lenders, we get rate discounts. You'll get a cheaper rate through our platform than if you go straight to that lender.
With other lenders, we do cash back. So you get the exact same rates and discounts as with the lender directly, but through us, you'll get an additional cash bonus. So you always get something better using Juno. There's no fees at all to take advantage of Juno's platform.
And then, again, this just talks about that that free consultation. It's a great option. Take advantage. Worst case is we'll tell you already the best path, but given your loan balances, it's always good to make sure you have the most up to date information.
And so with that, I will leave it for any questions. There is a QR code in the bottom corner there as well. If you want to, that that'll take you right to the landing page where you can run a rate check or schedule a consultation with my team.
And I believe there are some questions that have come in, so let me pull that up here, and we can start with that. And then if anybody has any additional questions, feel free to throw them in the q and a.
Let's see. Is this specific to federal loans only?
Save and forbearance. Save forbearance months are considered eligible for buyback for PSLF. Yes. So with the buyback, since you brought it up, we'll talk about it briefly.
With the buyback, you have to be at forgiveness with the months you buy back. So the past eighteen months in safe forbearance, when you go to buy those months back, that has to take your total to a hundred and twenty. So if you're at five years right now, buying back eighteen months would take you to seventy eight months. You can't do it yet.
The buyback has to bring you to a hundred and twenty months, but the safe forbearance months are eligible. Yes.
Do IVRs twenty years before forgiveness? Yes. So if you were on ICR, which was twenty five years, and you switched then theoretically, if you were over twenty years and you switched to IVR new, which is a twenty year forgiveness if you're eligible for IVR new instead of IVR old, theoretically, yes, that should bring you immediately to forgiveness, and you would work with your servicer on that.
That that should be the case.
You can refinance private loans and keep federal loans separate. Absolutely. When we look at refinancing, you can refinance any amount of your student loans up to and including the total. So if you want to refinance everything, you can.
If you just want to target specific loans that have rates that are higher than the refinance offers, but then there's some rates that are lower than the refinance then you can, you know, essentially, like, cherry pick the specific loans. And then in the future, you can, you know, refinance again. So if rates come down to now, you do wanna combine everything together, you have that option as well. Yes.
The twenty year rule is not for so the the what you're referring to, just for clarity there, the twenty year rule, that's specific to save to where and pay as you earn, Where there were some where if you only had undergraduate loans, repay was that as well, I believe. If you only had undergraduate loans, it's twenty twenty years. Graduate loans was twenty five years.
IBR new is twenty years. So as long as you qualify, the level of education and the loan type does not play into that specifically. The one thing to keep in mind, though, is that since it is twenty twenty six, the balance is this forgiven will be taxable.
So you you will wanna look at how much is if you get your loan forgiven this year, you'll receive a ten ninety nine next year for that forgiveness amount that you will have to file on your twenty twenty six tax return. So keep that in mind.
We've answered all of the live questions there. Yeah. We'll stick around for a couple of minutes. If anybody has any additional questions, feel free to pop them in the chat there.
And but that that concludes at least the education portion of our our webinar today, and definitely appreciate everybody joining on and and hope that, you you you took something away and splits you in a better spot with your loans.
We'll give it another minute or so if anybody thinks of any last minute questions before we, formally end the webinar here.
Okay. Alright. Well, with that, if there are no other questions, we'll go ahead and we'll we'll end the webinar. But, again, appreciate everybody joining on. If you do have any questions, as always, feel free to reach out on that landing page.
Yep. One more here. Refinancing can happen at any time.
Yeah. So there's what's called a residency refinance, specifically for a situation like yours. And the way that works is it's a hundred dollar a month payment on the loan while you're in residency, but you choose that ten year option, for example, now based on current rates. And then your ten year payment will begin post residency. And so what's nice is on the documents and everything, you will see what that monthly payment post residency will be for that ten year period. So it gives you plenty of time to plan around that financially as you look at job offers, different things like that. You know now exactly what your monthly payment's gonna be month over month.
So residency refinance is a fantastic product if you're going that way. We'd be there's a specific letter that offers that. So, you know, it's case if you schedule a call, we'd be more than happy to, you know, work one on one and kind of show you what that looks like.
Alrighty. Well, that will go ahead and conclude. Again, appreciate everybody joining on, and hope that you all have a wonderful rest of your Thursday. Take care, everybody.
And then if you have any kind of questions throughout, the should be a a q and a feature at the bottom in your box there. Might be able to use the chat feature as well, either one, but feel free to drop your questions as they come about, and we will answer them. At the end of the webinar, there'll there'll be time for and a. So allow me to pull this up here. One second.
Okay. Alright. So that's it. We're gonna be as I said, talking about navigating student loan repayments and what this looks like, some different changes, etcetera, that have come about in the student loan space. So just as a disclaimer, Juno is not an investment adviser, financial analyst, etcetera. If you were to refinance as well, we lose any kind of protections as it pertains to federal student loans. So something just to keep in mind.
So what we'll cover today is the new wrap plan that's coming out this summer for federal loans as well as changes to other income driven repayment plans. If you are finishing medical school or residency, what to expect when loans enter repayments, how federal repayment plans, those remaining, and federal forgiveness works, and any kind of changes with that. And then a little bit about when refinancing makes sense and timing, and then we'll wrap with just some common mistakes, best practices, and things to look out for as it comes to thinking about your repayment strategy over time.
Just a quick intro of myself. My name is Joe Price Gault. I lead the repayment and refinance division at Juno. Been in this space a little over six years and the person worked with, at this point, a little over twelve thousand borrowers.
I've counseled on just under a billion dollars in student loan debt. So I've seen every situation that's out there and, you know, love helping borrowers and figure this out, worked with a lot of physicians to help them fit this into their lifestyles and, you know, find the best strategy for them to repay their loans over time. Okay. So we'll start off a little bit with if you are newly graduated, and I realize this might pertain to everyone on the webinar.
But if you are somebody that is finishing, you know, medical school and you are in that space, you know, when you graduate, you have a grace period. You have a six month window during which time, you know, until repayment begins if you don't consolidate your loans. So, what that looks like is, you know, during that time period, you have to think about how you'll repay your loans, what repayment plan you will enroll in. Private loans as well typically have anywhere from six to nine months of a grace period before the repayment kicks in depending on the agreement of that private loan.
So during that period, you don't have to pay on the loan. You might want to because interest does accrue still, so the balance is going up every month until you enter repayment.
So any kind of payment you make can help mitigate that extra cost. With federal loans, the only way to get out of the grace period is to consolidate. So, you know, that's when you bring all of your loans together. We'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation here.
But, basically, it's bringing all of your loans together into a new federal loan, and it has certain benefits there. And that also allows you to pursue things like PSLF sooner than if you wait out the grace period. And then you can also refinance during the grace period if you would want to, and many private lenders will match an existing and remaining grace period. So you can take advantage of a low rate while still maintaining the right to not have your payment kick in right away.
So that's definitely a nice feature. It's just something that you would take advantage of.
So income driven repayment for federal loans is is exactly as it sounds. It's a repayment plan that's based on your income.
It's not directly tied to the balance of the loan. Now in some cases, the plans take into account the balance, such as income based repayment. Income based repayment has a certain apt amount at which the payment can't go above based on your loan balance and interest rate. There's a new plan coming out called the repayment assistance plan that bases payments solely on your income. It's not tied in any way to the balance of the loan. It's just simply a correlation of your income over time from your taxable adjusted gross income.
So the save plan. This is a plan that a lot of folks have been in for two, three years now. If you're in the save plan still, if you're on this call, you don't have a payment due on your loan still, but you are accruing interest on the loan. Right? So this plan came about back in twenty twenty three to replace what was then the revised page of our plan. No payments have been made on this plan since summer of twenty twenty four, so going on about eighteen months now.
And the time spent on this plan during that pause doesn't count for forgiveness. So if you're somebody who's pursuing public service loan forgiveness, that time does not traditionally count. So that is something to keep in mind there. The interest did kick back on in August of last year.
So at this point, you should have received some sort of notification about that, and you've been able to remain a plan without making a payment. Right? So you might have received a bill. A lot of borrowers received a bill by accident from their servicer.
You didn't have to make a payment. The official date at which you'll be kicked off of this plan, if you don't voluntarily move into something else, has not been formally revealed. There's language in the bill that was passed last summer that borrowers will be moved off of this plan by July of twenty twenty eight, but there's a lot of expectations that may happen sooner. So if you're somebody who is staying on this plan to take advantage of not having to make a payment, that's perfectly fine, but you do want to keep in mind that you you might abruptly be told or moved to go into a different repayment plan with the government.
So that's something that, you know, we can help with through Juno. One of ways we help borrowers is just simply navigating federal repayment options and finding a good alternative to save, and then we do that through free consultations.
So starting this summer, they're going to begin unwinding existing plans. So if you're a new graduate and you consolidate your loans after this summer, then you will have two options. You'll have this new wrap plan, and you'll have, income based repayment. Older borrowers, so if you had if you entered repayment prior to July first coming up this year, if you're already in repayment and you're not taking out any additional loans, you still have access to some older plans, the pay as you earn and the income contingent repayment plan, but those two plans are going away.
So the top half of this slide, pay as you earn income contingent and save, those plans will all be gone by July of twenty twenty eight. And at that point, all borrowers will need to choose between one of these two plans. And I apologize. Somebody said earlier, if you are graduating after this year and you consolidate after July of this summer, then you'll only be eligible for the wrap plan.
So going forward, most borrowers will have choice between two, but eventually, borrowers will only have a choice of that wrap plan for income driven repayment.
So income based repayment, the way that this plan works is that it is ten percent to fifteen percent of what's called your discretionary income. So what they do is they basically take your adjusted gross income on your taxes, and then they take off an additional amount for your family size and the poverty level amount of income for your state. And then the remaining number is what your payment is based on. Okay?
The important piece is when you borrowed your first loan. Okay? Because there's two versions of the income based repayment plan. There's an old version, and there's a new version.
And if you borrowed a loan at all prior to July of twenty fourteen, and then you had a balance you borrowed again after that date, you're only eligible for income based old repayment, which is fifteen percent of your income. K? And not to get too deep into the details there. Again, there's some that we can kind of look through your specific situation one on one and see how this applies to you.
But the takeaway is just simply that these plans are more expensive than, say, right, these are more expensive probably than other repayment options you may have seen in the past. So the big thing is, you know, unfortunately, you'll probably expect your payment to go up in some degree. So it's all about finding the right repayment plans. The other important piece is that this plan does accrue interest if your payment is less than the interest on the loan.
So if you have a large loan balance, right, if you're in the couple hundred thousand dollars and your payment doesn't cover all the interest monthly, this plan backs up. The the balance goes up and that unpaid interest accrues. So it's important to keep in mind. K?
And this slide just recaps a lot of of what we talked about there.
The other option is this new repayment assistance plan. So, again, it's a brand new plan. It's coming out for the first time this summer. It's not available for enrollment yet. It will be available for enrollment later this year.
As of right now, the one important nuance in the language of this plan is that you cannot if you're someone who's eligible for both wrap and the income based plan that we just covered and you choose the wrap plan, as of right now, the language says that you can't later on go back and choose the income based plan. That's potentially going to change, but as of right now, that is the way the language reads. So it's important to understand that, right, whenever you're making a decision on which repayment plan to choose. The other piece is that this plan qualifies for public service loan forgiveness if you're pursuing that path. This also eventually forgives on its own, but it's after thirty years of payment.
It's a very long time you have to have a balance out there, three hundred and sixty payments, and still have a balance remaining to forgive. So it takes a long time. The other piece is that the payment is uncapped. So if you're a physician, you know, if if, say, you eventually own a medical practice of some sort and your income is high six, low seven figures even, a plan like this could be incredibly expensive because it's ten percent of your adjusted gross income.
So one of the things you wanna consider when you're looking at repayment plan is payment today, but then also future earnings. Right? And what does that look like? If you're starting out right now making less, but, you know, you have plans in five, six, even ten years of, you know, making well into the six or seven figures of income, this could be a bad long term strategy.
Right? And, again, that's where we can help you kinda navigate and understand what that does look like year by year because you might wanna eventually refinance. You might wanna choose something like this upfront to keep payment low while you're starting out. But then the way it works is every twelve months, you update your income with the government.
So your payment adjusts every twelve months every year based on your income for that past year.
Eventually, we'll catch up to that higher income. So all those to keep in mind, this is, again, designed to be a general overview where we can, you know, talk more one on one as it applies to your specific situation. And this chart is just designed to give an idea of between, essentially, the three plans available to wrap and then the two versions of IVR, old and new, what it looks like at income level. Right?
For most borrower or for most individuals on this call, rather, you're probably in that hundred and ten thousand or more bucket. If not now, you will be at some point. And that's where, you know, you can see that IVR old is, more expensive than wrap, but IVR new is the cheapest. So if you're able to qualify for IVR new, right, that can oftentimes be a good option, but we wanna look at as well your overall loan balance.
Right? If monthly, this is the cheapest, but like we said, this plan doesn't cover unpaid interest. So if your balance you make a monthly payment, but your balance still increases because you're not covering all the interest, That might not be good. The wrap plan, this new plan, if your payment is less than the interest, the government covers all that interest monthly.
So that can be a really advantageous reason to take advantage of that.
The PSLF.
So if you're not familiar with the program or if you are pursuing the program, the good news is the PSLF is not going away. Okay? There's been no indications at this point. It was put in place by congress.
Congress alone would have to overturn it, which at this point, there's no indication of. So that's good news for borrowers. And the new repayment plan will count, the new wrap plan, if that's a good plan for you for this. And existing payments made on older income driven plans that are going away also continue to count.
So you won't lose credit for anything. Okay? The only piece that doesn't count is that time spent in that save pause over the past eighteen months. That technically doesn't count.
There's what's called a PSF buyback that we won't get into that essentially might provide an option. Again, if that's something that would apply, it's it's something we could talk more one on one about. With PSLF, though, you have to be on an income driven plan. Right? So the biggest thing is, you know, again, if you're on a plan that's going away, when looking at the plans you'll have switch into to continue this because you have to be on income driven, it might be more expensive. Your payment might go up. So we would wanna see, you know, what the remainder of your payments look like just to ensure that PSLF will still be a good path if your payments go up and give you an idea of, you know, still what that estimated total cost and forgiveness amount looks like.
To qualify and pursue PSLF, you have to fill out paperwork ideally on an annual basis, you know, certifying your employer and making sure that your employment records stay up to date with the part of education, and then also recertifying your income driven repayment plan on time.
Common question is if you take any kind of breaks in work over that ten years. Right? So you take a maternity or paternity leave or you take a year of fellowship that doesn't isn't that a nonprofit, and so that period of a year isn't qualified. That doesn't reset your payment clock when you go back to nonprofit work.
Okay? At a minimum, you have to pay for ten years per PSLF, a hundred twenty payments. You can pay longer. So if you have a year or two that's nonqualified because you weren't working for a an employer at that point that qualifies, that's fine.
Doesn't have to be consecutive. Right? You just have to cumulatively of all of your payments made, a hundred and twenty of those have to be qualified to PSLF. A qualified payment is it was an income driven payment that was made that month while you were employed full time at either a nonprofit or a government entity.
And then there's other loan forgiveness. So these income driven plans, right, if you're not pursuing PSLF, which is ten years, then the income driven plans do forgive, think we had mentioned briefly earlier, after anywhere from twenty to thirty years. Depends on the plan. It's a long time to get to forgiveness.
The other caveat is that PSLF, the balance forgiven is tax free from a federal tax perspective. Maybe subject to state income tax, but it's not taxed from a federal perspective. The income driven plans, if you pursue forgiveness while not working at a nonprofit, you just simply stay on them until the plans eventually do forgive the remaining balance. That remaining not forgiven is taxes income.
So that can be a very large taxable event, you know, in the five and six figures depending on the balance that you have forgiven over time. And so that's something you wanna plan for. Right? These can be great plans to use if that makes sense in your situation, but you wanna make sure that that's the best path and that you know what that taxable event will cost so you can plan for that over time.
So now let's kinda flip gears. That's federal repayment. Let's flip gears over here to refinancing and private payment.
And so refinancing, taking out a brand new loan to pay off your existing student loans. These are all still student loans. Okay? So the refinancing, the funds can only be used to pay off student loans.
You can't take out extra to include any, like, credit card debt, car loan debt, things like that. So it's still a student loan. It's just a different type, essentially, of student loan. You can refinance both federal and private loans together.
They become one single private loan going forward. You can continue to refinance that private loan again as rates fall. Right? Throughout the course of this year, you'll likely receive communication from us through Juno as rates continue to fall and refinance options become available, but you can never return to the federal side.
Right? So you give up income driven repayment. You give up PSLF. You just wanna make sure if you are refinancing a federal loan that you don't need access to any of those programs.
Refinancing consolidation, two terms that are commonly used one or the other, and they do mean different things. Refinancing is privatizing a loan, brand new loan, terms and rates based on your credit and income profile. Consolidation is a government option for federal loans only that takes all of those individual federal loans. If you funded your medical degree through federal loans, likely have fifteen, maybe even twenty loans, brings them all together into one single federal loan for that balance.
And then the interest rate is just the weighted average interest rate of all those loans rounded up to the nearest one eighth of a percent. So, basically, you don't get a break. The the interest cost is effectively the same. It just simply combines all the loans into one loan.
And there there's reasons for doing it, but it's just simply different from refinancing.
Eligibility for refinancing, typically good to great credit. You know, the lenders like to see at least a six fifty. What I always say to you, though, is that it matters why your score is what it is. Right?
Two borrowers can both have a six hundred fifty credit score. If borrower one is simply new out of school and they don't have a lot of repayment history on their loans, but they paid everything on time, they might be at a six fifty because they just simply started repaying. They're building their credit profile. Borrower two has been out for twenty years and has a lot of missed and late payments, and it's a very different six fifty.
You know, a bank might have a harder time trusting repayment for that. So the credit score is important, but why your credit score is that number, your credit history? Excuse me. That's also very important.
Income or future income, we can use job offers up to six months in advance. Generally, at least thirty five thousand is what is looked for. And then there are options as well if you're an international student loan borrower on an f one visa. There are options as well to refinance with certain lenders.
Timing for refinancing is generally up to six months before you graduate or already graduated. Again, if you do it before you graduate, you need to have a job offer. Refinancing does require proving income to justify the refinance, either pay stubs, tax returns if you're a ten ninety nine, or a side job offer.
Some key reasons to refinance, and then we'll also talk about the opposite of key reasons to hold off. But you can reduce your interest rate and pay it off faster. Right? So if you again, if you're not going for income driven, if you're not going for forgiveness, if you're gonna pay your loan off in full and you can refinance and get a lower rate that allows you to save on interest, take advantage of it.
It's just money back in your pocket. There's no fees on refinancing student loans other than the state of Florida charges a documentary stamp tax that is specific to that state. It's a very cheap cost, though, overall. It's not something they should deter from refinancing.
But if you do live in Florida, you'll it's just a little nuance there. Key reason number two is to release a cosigner. A lot of times if you're going to school, if you have a private loan or even if you refinance early on and you need a cosigner to get the refinance, refinancing again is a new loan. So it doesn't really look at the existing loan setup.
It's a new loan. It's a new opportunity to have a a refi or to have just yourself on the loan.
Moving from variable to fixed rates. Variable rates were very popular, four to five years ago when rates were very low. They have since crept up. They're starting to kinda creep back down, but variable rates fluctuate.
So if you have a large balance and you chose a long term variable interest rate for your loan, it might be time to switch out of that. Right? You might wanna move it into a lower fixed rate that never changes until that loan is paid off. And then lastly is adjust your monthly payment.
Right? Say that you can't afford the full amount and you need to just stretch this thing out to a longer term to get that payment down. Or on the flip side, maybe you're in a spot where you're done with residency and fellowship. You're now making two or three times your fellowship income, and you can pay this thing off in five years.
You wanna get that lower interest rate. Refinancing allows you to do that.
But there are reasons to hold off. Right? Number one is if you simply can't beat the rate. Right? If you have a say you refinance your loan, if you're on this call and you refinance back in twenty twenty when, your fifteen year rates at that point were in the the twos in some cases. Right?
Your five year rate today isn't gonna be as low as that. So in some cases, you just might wanna still stay with the loan you have even if it is longer term if that rate is good, and you can just simply pay it off faster if you want to. PSLF and federal, Cannot overemphasize this enough. If you are pursuing loan forgiveness, if you're taking advantage of some federal program at this point that you need to hang on to, do not refinance. That will permanently eliminate that, and you really wanna be careful with that.
And then as well, lower income. Right? So there are options if you're in residency. There's what's called residency refinance. So there are options for lower income dependent situation. But if you simply just cannot afford the full payment on the loan at a given point, and so you are using income driven repayment, you know, federal options are good for that.
So pass through that. So taking a little bit of a look at what you could save, and this is just for illustrative purposes. These interest rates aren't reflective of anything in particular at this point at least. But, basically, when you go to school, the rates tend to be higher than when you graduate.
Okay? And the reason is because when you're going to school and taking out that loan, there there's a lot of unknowns. Right? You don't you haven't completed the degree yet.
You don't have a job yet, so the bank doesn't know what you're gonna make your ability to pay. And, typically, you have a lower credit score because you're still establishing your financial history. When you graduate, you have a job. Right?
Typically, in the six figures.
You've completed the degree, which is the overall purpose of the loan that you took out, and you probably have at least a little bit of a higher credit score because you've had loans for a couple of years now on your credit report. So you're less risky. A bank has ability to really evaluate their true chance of getting that loan paid back. As a result, you get a lower interest rate.
If you have federal plus loans from the past couple of years, their shares are pretty high. So, you know, eight, nine percent in some cases, I myself had plus loans from these past couple of years for the government.
Good time to definitely look at refinancing that because the interest rates now are, you know, in some cases, half of that if they're in the fours.
So it it's just an opportunity to save. Right? Again, evaluate against federal. If you're pursuing forgiveness or different things, the interest rate doesn't matter as much because you're going for a forgiveness option.
But any kind of repayment in full and, like, monthly paying down the principal balance strategy, you definitely wanna look if you have loans from the past couple of years. We have some resources on the Juno website that just help really paint the picture. Right? You can put in your existing loan information and then your new loan with the interest rate that you pull, and it'll show you just real simply what you could save.
Right? And so it just helps kinda paint that picture of, okay. Is refinancing really worth it? Is it worth going through the process, which is a very easy process?
If you could save almost fifteen thousand dollars, it's probably worth an hour of time, you know, on the lender's website and some paperwork to put fifteen thousand dollars back in your own bank account at the end of the day.
So some common mistakes to avoid, things to think about. Number one is going directly to a lender. You know, we're we're in a time and place now where marketplaces exist. You know, Juno is a marketplace, and there's others out there as well to where the bank they ultimately end up with, whether it's Ernest, SoFi, Laurel Road, whomever it might be, they exist on marketplaces.
So you can fill out the same form you'd fill in those individual websites. You can fill it through marketplace and have all of those options pulled back instantly. So one form, multiple rate makes it easy to shop. It's always a soft credit pull.
Checking your rates never impacts your credit, so there's really no reason not to get as many quotes as possible, especially when we're talking about the amount of loan balance you're looking to pay it back.
You can also refinance again. So a lot of folks in this year, especially, right, rates are supposed to keep coming down. That's the talk of the economy. And so a lot of times we'll hear, I wanna wait for the rate drop.
I I it's not low enough yet. I wanna keep waiting. You can always refinance it again. Okay?
If rates drop again and you qualify, you can always refinance that thing a month later. Right? You can refinance as soon as a month later. You can refinance at any point again.
And so but but don't wait for that because it's a lot of uncertainty. Interest rates are tied to a lot of different factors that while the expectation is a rate drop, if for whatever reason rates increase and now you missed out on a a dip, you know, it's gone. So always take advantage of savings when it's available, and then just simply check updated offers to make sure that there's never something better available for you. Some strategies to keep in mind, biggest one is evaluate your budget and and really consider these repayment options carefully.
Okay? When you're starting out or if you're refinancing in residency, especially, you know, a five year term looks really attractive, but you wanna make sure you can afford that. Okay? You you can always pay your loan off early.
There's never a prepayment penalty on the student loans and the especially the lenders that we work with. So if you choose a longer term to have some flexibility and to have some breathing room, you could throw extra money at it and pay it off early and go through the principal balance. You just don't wanna get yourself into a spot where all of your income is tied up into that required monthly loan payment, and now you can't buy a house. You can't get a car loan.
It can just make it messy. And the only way out of that is refinancing again. And if you can't qualify, now we're really in tight spots. So just be careful, right, when you're looking at the refinance option.
And with that, you know, just consider the longer options. And, again, evaluate refinancing again. If you can get a better rate, it's a free process. It never costs anything outside the state of Florida.
A small ancillary cost anyway. To refinance again, take advantage of it. So real quick, just on Juno and how we work. So, Juno, I said, we are a marketplace.
We help borrowers find the best possible offers for refinancing. So we do free consultations one on one. You meet with either myself or one of the teammates I've done that we've done, honestly, over twelve thousand of these consults with borrowers over the years, and we help you determine what is the best path. Right?
If you should stay federal, we'll tell you that. Stay federal. If you should refinance, though, we'll help you navigate that, and we'll show you the numbers as to why that makes sense. Right?
We'll help you understand why the recommendation is what it is. With refinancing, though, we negotiate better deals than you can get with the banks directly. So with some lenders, we get rate discounts. You'll get a cheaper rate through our platform than if you go straight to that lender.
With other lenders, we do cash back. So you get the exact same rates and discounts as with the lender directly, but through us, you'll get an additional cash bonus. So you always get something better using Juno. There's no fees at all to take advantage of Juno's platform.
And then, again, this just talks about that that free consultation. It's a great option. Take advantage. Worst case is we'll tell you already the best path, but given your loan balances, it's always good to make sure you have the most up to date information.
And so with that, I will leave it for any questions. There is a QR code in the bottom corner there as well. If you want to, that that'll take you right to the landing page where you can run a rate check or schedule a consultation with my team.
And I believe there are some questions that have come in, so let me pull that up here, and we can start with that. And then if anybody has any additional questions, feel free to throw them in the q and a.
Let's see. Is this specific to federal loans only?
Save and forbearance. Save forbearance months are considered eligible for buyback for PSLF. Yes. So with the buyback, since you brought it up, we'll talk about it briefly.
With the buyback, you have to be at forgiveness with the months you buy back. So the past eighteen months in safe forbearance, when you go to buy those months back, that has to take your total to a hundred and twenty. So if you're at five years right now, buying back eighteen months would take you to seventy eight months. You can't do it yet.
The buyback has to bring you to a hundred and twenty months, but the safe forbearance months are eligible. Yes.
Do IVRs twenty years before forgiveness? Yes. So if you were on ICR, which was twenty five years, and you switched then theoretically, if you were over twenty years and you switched to IVR new, which is a twenty year forgiveness if you're eligible for IVR new instead of IVR old, theoretically, yes, that should bring you immediately to forgiveness, and you would work with your servicer on that.
That that should be the case.
You can refinance private loans and keep federal loans separate. Absolutely. When we look at refinancing, you can refinance any amount of your student loans up to and including the total. So if you want to refinance everything, you can.
If you just want to target specific loans that have rates that are higher than the refinance offers, but then there's some rates that are lower than the refinance then you can, you know, essentially, like, cherry pick the specific loans. And then in the future, you can, you know, refinance again. So if rates come down to now, you do wanna combine everything together, you have that option as well. Yes.
The twenty year rule is not for so the the what you're referring to, just for clarity there, the twenty year rule, that's specific to save to where and pay as you earn, Where there were some where if you only had undergraduate loans, repay was that as well, I believe. If you only had undergraduate loans, it's twenty twenty years. Graduate loans was twenty five years.
IBR new is twenty years. So as long as you qualify, the level of education and the loan type does not play into that specifically. The one thing to keep in mind, though, is that since it is twenty twenty six, the balance is this forgiven will be taxable.
So you you will wanna look at how much is if you get your loan forgiven this year, you'll receive a ten ninety nine next year for that forgiveness amount that you will have to file on your twenty twenty six tax return. So keep that in mind.
We've answered all of the live questions there. Yeah. We'll stick around for a couple of minutes. If anybody has any additional questions, feel free to pop them in the chat there.
And but that that concludes at least the education portion of our our webinar today, and definitely appreciate everybody joining on and and hope that, you you you took something away and splits you in a better spot with your loans.
We'll give it another minute or so if anybody thinks of any last minute questions before we, formally end the webinar here.
Okay. Alright. Well, with that, if there are no other questions, we'll go ahead and we'll we'll end the webinar. But, again, appreciate everybody joining on. If you do have any questions, as always, feel free to reach out on that landing page.
Yep. One more here. Refinancing can happen at any time.
Yeah. So there's what's called a residency refinance, specifically for a situation like yours. And the way that works is it's a hundred dollar a month payment on the loan while you're in residency, but you choose that ten year option, for example, now based on current rates. And then your ten year payment will begin post residency. And so what's nice is on the documents and everything, you will see what that monthly payment post residency will be for that ten year period. So it gives you plenty of time to plan around that financially as you look at job offers, different things like that. You know now exactly what your monthly payment's gonna be month over month.
So residency refinance is a fantastic product if you're going that way. We'd be there's a specific letter that offers that. So, you know, it's case if you schedule a call, we'd be more than happy to, you know, work one on one and kind of show you what that looks like.
Alrighty. Well, that will go ahead and conclude. Again, appreciate everybody joining on, and hope that you all have a wonderful rest of your Thursday. Take care, everybody.