My first loan was in 1979 and I have never had enough income to be required to make a payment (despite a Masters in Computer Science). I believe I have always been on some sort of income based plan. According to the Student Loan website loans are forgiven after 25 years on the income-based plans. Should I have been forgiven by now? Do I have to do something? Is there a way to find out how many years I have left? Does the clock start over if someone switches your income-based plan to a different one (there are several similar plans)?
Mohela, my current provider, said they don't have access to records of my loan before it got transferred to them from Aspire in 2015 (after the phone person spent some time 'digging them up'). The Government Student Loan site does not appear to have any way to contact them on this or anything else, there is just a link to determine who is handling your loan, Mohela in my case. I remember my loan being given to Aspire from the government around 10 years ago, but I'm not sure on this. They were all taken out over the years with the Federal government, no banks were involved. My loan total is now about $110,000.
The best response I got from Mohela was that I would get an email notification (from the Government?) when the 25 years was up, but as I mentioned earlier, my first loan was taken out in 1979, 37 years ago. My last loan was taken out sometime in the 80s. I think the phone person was just putting me off on this.
Mohela still gives me monthly billing statements saying I owe $0.00 payment each month and each year I forward them my fed tax returns (which I always do despite not owing taxes) for my payment calcuation,