SoFi Blog

It’s been another big year for student loans. As the $1.2 trillion in outstanding education debt continues to grow, the Class of 2014 became the most indebted ever, with recent college grads owing $33,000 on average and the number for graduate/professional degree borrowers often closer to the six-figure range.

The term “sequester” may seem so 2013, but the truth is that these automatic spending cuts are still in play – and the next round is scheduled for October 1^st.  Whether you’re currently financing an MBA or other grad school program with Direct PLUS loans or you’re considering using them in the future, these new sequester cuts may have an impact on the amount of money you’ll end up spending on your loans.

So what exactly do you need to know about student loans and the sequester?  Here’s the scoop:

If there’s anything clear about student loans, it’s that the terminology associated with student loans is often far from clear.  Take the words “consolidate” and “refinance,” for example.  Both of these fall into the category of “things you can potentially do with your student loans” and as a result they’re often used interchangeably.  But the terms can have different implications based on the context in which they’re being used.

So here’s the scoop:

When the government lowered federal loan rates last year, we stopped lending to college students and refocused our business on refinancing graduates.  The combination of lower loan rates and guaranteed government protections made it hard for us to justify choosing a SoFi loan while in school.  Our advice was to graduate, get a job and then consider SoFi.  Over 8,500 of you have done that, refinancing over $700 million in loans with us, saving money and gaining benefits like our unemployment protection and entrepreneur program.

When President Obama delivered new rules on income based repayment (IBR) for a limited group of borrowers back in 2013, we wrote about the shortcomings of that program. This week, the President extended the new IBR program to cover all borrowers, effective in 2015. It’s the same program as before, and while it can provide payment relief to some borrowers, it has some serious drawbacks. Notably: