"Hardship" qualification added to NEW proposed student loan forgiveness program

Are you facing a hardship? If so, you may eventually qualify for student loan forgiveness. We just got a major update to the brand new proposed student loan forgiveness program that's in the works by the Biden administration. So if you have a federal student loan or you know someone who has a federal student loan, this is something you're going to want to pay attention to. And I emphasize the words, pay attention. You need to watch this entire video because this is not done. This could still absolutely change. And as of right now, there is a specific definition to the word hardship. Don't worry, I'm going to explain all of that to you. But I want to first thank my subscribers for overwhelmingly voting for this story as the bonus this week. And if you want to read all of this information about this hardship qualification, I will email the document from the education department out to you tonight in my newsroom news roundup email. So make sure you sign yourself up. Okay, I want to make it very clear which proposed student loan forgiveness program I'm talking about. This is the one President Biden announced he would start working on immediately after the Supreme Court struck down his original plan to forgive up to $10,000 or $20,000 of federal student loans. It's important to understand when the Supreme Court struck down that program, they did not say President Biden could never come up with another student loan forgiveness program ever. The justices just said that particular program was not legal. So let me be clear. The President and the education department absolutely have every single legal right to try and forgive federal student loans again in a new way. And that's exactly what they've been working on ever since last summer. And I've actually been telling you all about the process in several videos. So this new program has been going through this long and tedious, what they call, rulemaking process through the Department of Education. And this proposed program is much more, like, tailored than the last one. It definitely will not apply to all federal student loan borrowers. Originally, there were just four categories of borrowers who would qualify, but the Department of Education just added a fifth category, this hardship qualification. But as I already mentioned, there is a specific definition being proposed for what is considered a hardship. At this point, the education department is proposing hardship would be defined using several factors, including things like a borrower's total student loan balance and required loan payment relative to household income, whether a borrower has high-cost burdens for essentials like health care or child care, whether the borrower is highly likely to default in two years, or any other factors of hardship identified by the Secretary of Education. But if you don't qualify for federal student loan forgiveness under that hardship category, a borrower you may qualify under the proposal if you meet one of the four other criteria, including that you currently have outstanding federal student loan balances that exceed what you originally borrowed, have loans that first entered repayment 20 or 25 years ago, took out loans to attend career training programs that created unreasonable debt loads or provided insufficient earnings for graduates, as well as borrowers who attended institutions with unacceptably high student loan default rates, or you are eligible for forgiveness under repayment plans like the SAVE plan or targeted relief programs or closed school loan discharges, except you have not applied for the relief yet. So if you meet one of those or all of those requirements under this proposed rule, you may be entitled to full or partial student loan forgiveness. As I have said repeatedly in this video, this is only a proposal. The language is not finalized yet. The rules are not finalized yet. The full regulatory process is not done. And once the final proposed text is done, this proposed rule still has to go through a public comment period and a waiting period, so there are many more months left to go. And even after it's all finalized, there will absolutely be legal challenges to all of this, and this program could find its way right back in front of the Supreme Court. The Education Department and the rulemaking regulators will be meeting later this week to talk about this new hardship qualification for loan forgiveness. So lots can still change, but, of course, I will be here.