If you are unable to pay off your creditors, filing for bankruptcy is one of the best options available. However, there are some financial obligations like student loan debt, some taxes, child or spousal support, etc. that survive bankruptcy filing unless you can prove that repaying them will become a huge financial burden. Can debtors actually get a fresh financial start, if they still need to pay student loans? If you ask Los Angeles based lawyers of Recovery Law Group law firm, the answer is yes.
Tips to Manage Student Loan Debt after Bankruptcy
- The 1st and most important step to take after your bankruptcy discharge is to contact your student loan lender to rearrange payments. Ideally, you should prepare a strategy to repay your student loans before you get your bankruptcy discharge.
- Find out your repayment options. Student loans can be government and private. Government loans provide more scope for deferment and loan forgiveness than private ones, so opt for those options.
- Select your repayment options by finding out how long it will take you to repay your student loans. Choose whether you wish to repay your student loan in 5-7 years or want smaller monthly payments to continue over a longer period of time and/or a chance for forgiveness after 25 years.
- Whichever option you choose for repayment, make sure not to take a repayment plan which hampers you from saving money and creating an emergency saving account. Creation of a savings account is extremely essential to ensure that you do not end up in a financial mess.
- Always keep your unsecured debts to a minimum after bankruptcy. Credit card lenders find people just out of bankruptcy as extremely lucrative clients, since after bankruptcy discharge, they have very few to no debts to pay. Though taking a credit card will improve your credit ratings, unnecessarily accumulating debts will cause you to default on student loan repayment plan.