If you’re worried about how you’re going to pay off your student loans once you graduate, we have some good news:

There are two new federal programs that could drastically reduce your monthly student loan payments and provide loan forgiveness. The following information comes from The Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the independent, nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success, which works to make higher education more available and affordable for people of all backgrounds.
 
The first program is Income-Based Repayment and becomes available on July 1. It will cap monthly payments at a reasonable percentage of income for borrowers with heavy debt burdens or low incomes, and forgive any remaining debt after 25 years. This means that if you’re underpaid, underemployed, or unable to work due to illness, your student loan payments won’t break the bank, and could be as low as $0 a month. The program covers almost all federal loans made to undergraduate and graduate students, whether your lender is a private company like Sallie Mae or Citibank, or the federal government.
 
The second program is Public Service Loan Forgiveness. If you are considering a career in public service, such as working for the government or for a nonprofit 501(c)(3)organization, you might qualify for this program. It forgives remaining federal student loan debt after 10 years of qualifying payments and employment. Public Service Loan Forgiveness could save people who have lots of graduate school debt thousands of dollars.
 
More information about both programs, including Frequently Asked Questions and a calculator that estimates your monthly payments, is available at IBRinfo.org. Sign up for email updates there, so The Project on Student Debt can keep you updated with all the latest news and information about how to make the most of these borrower benefits if and when you need them. You can also join The Project on Student Debt’s Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18274939375.