My mother took out a Parent PLUS Loan for me this past Winter 2018 semester. The amount was $1,500. I just read somewhere that Parent Plus Loans don’t have a grace period. So they don’t have a six month grace period? I’m home for the summer. I’m not taking any summer classes. Will my mother have to start making payments immediately? If I would’ve known about this, I would’ve never had her take this loan out. I feel so bad because I don’t want her to take on this debt.
I was going to pay for the loan anyway, but I don’t have a job right now. I don’t want to burden my mother with this. Could she get the loan deferred or apply for forbearance until I’m able to find a job and pay for it?
I was under the assumption that Parent PLUS Loans have a six month grace period or don’t require repayment until after I graduate.
Your mother could defer payments, but interest would continue to run —so if she doesn’t make payments, the loan balance will grow.
But a PLUS loan is amortized over 10 years, so the payments due on a $1500 loan should be less than $20 a month. Here’s link to a calculator you can use – https://www.calcxml.com/do/parent-plus-loan – it gives me a payment of $17.42/month. Even if you don’t have a regular job it shouldn’t be difficult for you to do odd jobs to earn an extra $20 a month to help your mom with those payments.
Either that or you could have her defer until after you graduate – but that means that every month that goes by, there is $8.75 being added to the loan balance. In another thread you said that you are age 20 and just completed your third year of college. So if the loan was deferred until 6 months after you graduate - then that would add $157.50 to the loan balance.
Does Parent need to send a form completed and signed to apply for deferment or just do online and request a deferment if the student pursuing a graduate degree ? We did it online on Navient site and got an approval email but later get an email that first payment is due on 12/2018.