Student loan debt can cause an incredible amount of personal and financial stress. Finding a way to reduce your monthly payments, get out of debt faster or even get a portion of your debt forgiven can relieve the burden of unaffordable debt. Navient is one of the major student debt servicers in the country, and they have had quite a bit of controversy lately. Whether you’ve heard about the lawsuit against them, have had terrible personal experiences with their customer service, or just want to reduce your overall debt; there are plenty of options!

As a loan servicer, Navient is essentially the handler of your loan. This means they work directly with you (the borrower) to establish an initial repayment plan and for the lifetime of the loans billing and even seeking payment of loans in default. Navient services both federal and private loans. This means you could have one or the other (federal or private) or even a combination of both.

Sallie Mae vs Navient

People often get confused when they have Navient loans or get put into one by the U.S. Department of Education as the name Sallie Mae often appears in searches with the servicer. They both originated from the same company known as Sallie Mae as well, which was a financial institution formed over 40 years ago that also was a servicer of federal and private student loans. In 2010 new laws were put in place prohibiting companies like Sallie Mae from servicing federal loans. Hence in 2014 it was announced the 2 companies would split and become completely separate corporations to deal with this new registration. This allows Navient to service both federal and private loans while Sallie Mae only services and issues new private loans.

How can you tell if your Navient Loans are private or federal? The best way to do this is to log into the National Student Loan Data System going to “Financial Review” or by logging in directly on the Navient website.

Navient School Loans and Payments

Most loan forgiveness programs are only eligible for those with federal loans from Navient. That doesn’t mean you have no options as a private loan borrower. There are ways to lower your payment via private loans. You can negotiate directly with your servicer to get lower payments or a new extended term or apply for some private student loan forgiveness options. Often times those that work in health care with private loans can get into private loan assistance programs offered by the National Health Service Corp that can negotiate lower payments or even refinancing.
If you have federal student loans from Navient there are a lot more options when it comes to loan forgiveness and debt consolidation programs. There are some important factors that go into qualifying for these from your income level to family size to the type of job you have. Below we outline from of the options for those with Federal Navient Student Loans:

• Teacher Loan Forgiveness: Just as the name suggests, this is for teachers that have been working for 5+ years with at least 1 year being at a title 1 school. This plan allows for up to $17,500 to be forgiven on the total amount of your student debt.
• IDR or Income-Driven Repayment Plans: One of the more widely used programs for those that have unaffordable payments and need immediate student debt relief. The plan is based on your current gross income and allows you to make smaller payments over an extended period of time. Once the all payments have been made in the time frame, the balance of what is owed is completely forgiven.
• Total and Permanent Disability Discharge: A program for those that are completely unable to make payments on their student loan debt as a result of a permanent disability and results in a total forgiveness of outstanding loan debt.
• PSLF (Public Service Loan Forgiveness):Navient does not offer PSLF, however if you have Navient loans contact a specialist and we can assist in getting you into PSLF. This option is available for those that work in the public sector as a service employee or even those that work for a non-profit organization. These types of plans offer loan forgiveness after a certain amount of time (usually 10 years) where the entirety of your loan is completely forgiven once you have made your payments for the allotted time frame. Payments are based on the IDR plan.

Alliance Loan Support has extensive experience with Navient Student Loans and has put thousands of borrowers in new forgiveness programs or consolidation plans to help lower and even eliminate a huge portion of their debt. You aren’t stuck making affordable payments forever, there is relief! Qualification is free with one easy phone call or online submission.