[EDITOR'S NOTE: Please be advised, the SAVE repayment plan is currently held up in the courts. We will update you at a later date when we have answers.]
Student loans periodically become hot political issues or sources of controversy. At StudentLoanAdvice.com, we strive to remain neutral and offer the most objective perspective possible. However, it is impossible to entirely remove our opinions from what we write and say when consulting with borrowers about their student loans.
Our No. 1 priority is to help you navigate the mess of student loans and utilize all legal strategies available to you. Today, we’ll cover eight controversial areas of student loan management and talk about the legality, ethics, and policy implications of those various strategies.
#1 Income Driven Repayment Forgiveness (20 and 25 years)
It is well known in The White Coat Investor community that Dr. Jim Dahle despises income driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness, even if he grudgingly admits there are times (more and more as IDRs become more generous) when it is the best plan for someone. He hates the idea of doctors still being saddled with student loans in their 50s, well past the halfway mark on their career. I don’t love this as an option for borrowers either, but with recent changes to student loan programs, I want to give this another perspective.
Most borrowers should either pursue Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or live like a resident and pay their loans off in 3-5 years out of training. Both of these approaches tend to be the most cost-effective, and they are completed relatively quickly after school or training. Compared to IDR forgiveness, they have a huge advantage of taking less than five years after a doctor finishes training.
But what if your student loans are 3-4x your income? What if your career plans don't include full-time work or a government or nonprofit employer? And what if there’s no way you can afford to make those huge mortgage-sized student loan payments?
This is where IDR forgiveness may be the best option for you.
IDR forgiveness is when a borrower enrolls in an IDR plan and makes payments for 20-25 years. When a borrower reaches their forgiveness term, they pay taxes on the outstanding student loan balance. Say you owe $400,000 in student loans and are in a 40% tax bracket. You could pay a $160,000 tax bill, commonly referred to as the “tax bomb,” in the year your loans are forgiven. Yes, it’s painful and not optimal after having paid on the loans for so long. But you do have two decades to save up money for the tax bomb. Incidentally, until 2026, IDR forgiveness is actually tax-free, and it's possible that this date could be extended by future legislation.
SAVE, ICR, and old IBR require 25 years of payments while PAYE and new IBR require 20 years of payments.
Here’s a scenario where a borrower may consider IDR forgiveness. You’re an orthodontist and you borrowed $750,000 at 7% for your undergrad, dental school, and residency, something that wouldn't be uncommon for a dental specialist. Suppose you're a divorced parent of two and an associate in a private practice, and you make $250,000 per year. We'll assume a 3% cost of living adjustment over time.
If you followed a standard 10-year repayment plan, you would pay around $8,700 per month, a total of $1.04 million. If you followed the extended 25-year repayment plan, you would pay about $5,300 per month, a total of $1.6 million.
In SAVE, your monthly payments are based on your income, and we’d expect an average monthly payment of about $2,629 for a total of $788,656 over 25 years. Your student loan balance at that time would still be $750,000. If that $750,000 were forgiven and you had a marginal tax rate of 40%, the tax bill would be $300,000. Thus,
Total cost of the loan = $300,000 + $788,656 = $1,148,656
In this scenario, SAVE is more than the standard repayment, but it's far less than the extended plan. Another factor is whether the borrower can afford a payment that is nearly $9,000 per month in standard repayment. It would obviously be much easier to make the $2,600 monthly payment and save for things like retirement, college savings, home, etc.
If a borrower plans to pay off their loans over a term longer than 10 years, they should strongly consider IDR forgiveness. In this scenario, IDR forgiveness could save them around $400,000. Moreover, this extra $400,000 could theoretically be invested and potentially more than double due to compound interest and appreciation over 25 years.
IDR forgiveness can be helpful to some. Give it strong consideration if you have a high debt-to-income ratio.
#2 Borrowing More Than You Should
Many of us are raised with the mentality to pay down our debts as soon as possible, believing that the quicker we can rid ourselves of debt, the better. Do you want to pay or receive interest? This common wisdom applies to many types of debt, including mortgages, car loans, consumer debt, and student loans. However, federal student loans are a bit unique in that you may never have to pay them back.
Imagine borrowing $300,000 and only paying back $100,000—just 30 cents on the dollar. For some, this might seem heretical, but it’s becoming more common with loan forgiveness programs like PSLF and even IDR forgiveness.
I frequently meet with graduate students planning to borrow large amounts to attend school. Some have no savings. Some can cover a year or so. Others have enough to pay it all as they go.
In the past, I advocated for cash-flowing tuition and borrowing as little as possible. However, given the current generosity of our federal student loan system and the programs available to doctors in and after training, such as SAVE and PSLF, I've reconsidered the dilemma of borrowing for education vs. paying as you go.
While I still see the value in paying down debt quickly, I now believe it is much better to borrow now and keep your options open. We don’t like the lesson this teaches—borrow more and rely on the government and loan forgiveness. However, it's tough to tell a heavily indebted doctor to turn down hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits on principle. Hate the game, not the player. Call your congressperson, but be sure to fill out your PSLF paperwork.
When posed the question of paying down loans or borrowing, Jim has often said, “I hate myself for telling medical students to borrow when they don't have to, but I do think that's the correct answer now for someone with cash going into medical school and it is what I would do if I were in your shoes.” He even wrote a whole article about this very topic.
More information here:
The (Nearly) Perfect PSLF Situation for a Physician
#3 Favor Pre-Tax Accounts Over Roth While in Training
I am an advocate for starting your investing or retirement accounts as early as possible—even if it's $10 per month. Building this habit will literally pay you dividends in the long run. The rule of thumb has long been to use Roth accounts while in residency and the other low-earning years of your career. Remember “Roth is for residents?” Well, there are exceptions to this rule of thumb, too.
If you scour the blogosphere, the WCI Forum, and Bogleheads, you’ll find some heated debates on the difference between saving in a Roth vs. a traditional account.
We are told by the financial industry to favor after-tax accounts in our lowest-income years. Income is lower, so we are taxed less. Our progressive tax system is one that, as income increases, we will pay more to Uncle Sam (generally). Then, when we retire and start to take money out of retirement, perhaps we’re in a higher tax bracket and tax rates have increased, as well. Those Roth dollars have already been taxed, and the appreciation in those accounts is not taxed when we take it out. Pretty sweet deal, right?
When you are in residency, money is usually tighter, and your income is the lowest it will be for your career. Additionally, you may be in an IDR plan where payments are based on income. The lower your taxable income, the lower your payments.
See below for a breakdown of monthly payments:
At an income of $70,000, your payment is $300. If you contribute $15,000 to your pre-tax retirement account—a 403(b) or 401(k)—it would lower your income to $55,000. That lowers your monthly payment by $124 per month and about $1,500 per year. Having lower monthly payments while in training can be helpful for budgeting, especially if you’re living in a high-cost-of-living area.
For docs in training, this strategy could save you between $4,500-$12,000 depending on the length of your training. If you end up doing PSLF, the reduced payments help to bring down the overall cost of your loan.
More information here:
Should You Make Roth or Traditional 401(k) Contributions?
Tax-Deferred vs. Roth Contributions: A Deep Dive
#4 Filing a Tax Return as an MS4 and Using That to Certify Income
As a new intern, you have two methods available to you to certify your income to the Department of Education. You can send them your paystub, or you can send them last year's tax return—which typically documents an income of $0. Obviously, your IDR payments will be much lower on an income of $0 than on an income of $60,000. That's why it is generally recommended that MS4s with federal student loans file a tax return for their MS3/MS4 tax year, even if they are not required to file. This is somewhat controversial, but the rules certainly allow one to use either method to document income. On the other hand, if an attending is going back into fellowship, it is to their advantage to use their first fellowship paystub to document their new lower income.
#5 Potentially Fraudulent Strategies
Most would agree that the above strategies are legal and ethical. However, there are plenty of other strategies being used that may be not. Let's talk about some situations where people probably take it too far.
Leaving Your Job and Recertifying Income to Lower Your Payment to $0
I see this happen when a doc leaves a job and calls their loan servicer to have them drop their payment to zero. This doc takes their next job a month later, and now they have $0 payments for an entire year. Once that leave ends (parental leave or a job gap), they could recertify using their most recent tax return to have payments pick up again.
Front-Loading Your Retirement Account on Your First Paystub
Submitting a pay stub for income documentation is generally a reasonable way to recertify income. However, it's possible to game the system with that pay stub, such as by making a huge retirement account contribution that month. While some “student loan advisors” out there recommend this, I'm not comfortable doing so. But here's how it works.
Let’s suppose you make $30,000 a month for an annual income of $360,000. If you front-load your retirement account in a traditional 401(k) and contribute $23,500 on your first paycheck, it would drop your take-home pay to $6,500 for that month. If you use that pay stub to document your income for IDR, your payments would be based on $6,500 per month instead of $30,000 per month.
As a result, this could lower your student loan payments by $2,350 per month and $28,200 for the year. To me, it seems too shady to take this approach, and I think you should submit income documentation that more accurately reflects your income. It seems different to me than using last year's tax return for a full year.
Documenting Income Using Only a Paystub When You Have Other Income Sources
Another strategy that I have seen recommended for business owners—generally dentists—is to pay oneself creatively. As an S Corp owner/employee, you can pay yourself whatever is categorized as reasonable income and take the rest of your income in distributions. Business owners will do this for a variety of reasons, including to save money on taxes.
Some borrowers choose to submit only their W-2 or pay stub—which reflects their salary—for income certification purposes instead of using their tax return that reports both salary and distributions. This approach can result in a lower reported income, potentially leading to lower payments under IDR plans.
For example, a solo practice dental owner pays themself $200,000 in salary and $200,000 in distributions. If they submit a tax return to document their income, payments are based on $400,000 of income. If they certify income using a pay stub instead, payments are based on their salary of $200,000.
How the dentist documents their income has a huge impact on their student loan payments. In this scenario, it is more accurate to submit a tax return that captures their total income.
This can become complex as distributions can vary from year to year depending on your industry. If you’re in a situation where it is impossible to project what business income/distributions would be, you could submit an employer letter detailing your expected salary and distributions for the year. It's better to give an estimate rather than nothing at all.
Declaring That You Cannot Access Spousal Income
Another strategy I’ve seen employed by married borrowers is marking no on this question:
Married borrowers will say “no” so they don’t incorporate their spouse’s income for student loan payments. This would allow a married borrower who files jointly (MFJ) to base their student loan payments only on their income. Generally, you can only exclude spousal income through Married Filing Separately (MFS). Opting for MFJ is often more attractive from a tax standpoint due to the potential for lower overall tax liability.
However, you should only mark “no” if you are separated or if you have been abused or abandoned by your spouse. Instead of marking “no” on this question, just file your taxes MFS to keep your payment lower.
When considering any of these strategies, you, at a minimum, need to ask yourself what your integrity is worth and consider the possibility of actual criminal prosecution for fraudulent behavior.
#6 Delaying Legal Marriage to Reduce Repayment Complexity
I trained as an accountant, and I have worked in the financial world for over a decade. I help doctors tackle complex financial questions, and sometimes I feel like a marriage therapist, as well. Though I’m far from qualified in couples therapy, I receive this question at least once per month: “Should we get married”?
This is a very personal question for each individual, and as someone who is married, I am biased. However, marriage does impact your finances, particularly regarding student loan payments.
When you are single, your student loan payments are based solely on your income. When you legally marry, your spouse’s income can be incorporated into the payments. If you file jointly, their income will be used for the payment calculation. Moreover, having one income instead of two increases your household size and your poverty line deduction.
For a household size of one in SAVE, ~$34,000 is deducted before your payments are calculated. If you make $200,000, $34,000 is deducted to calculate your discretionary income = $166,000.
For a household size of two in SAVE, ~$46,000 is deducted before your payments are calculated. If you make $200,000, your discretionary income would be $154,000.
If your spouse does not have an income, it can help lower your student loan payments to get married.
Most of the time when a couple approaches me about marriage, they are both earners. What if spouse A makes $200,000 and spouse B makes $300,000? In this situation, although they receive a larger deduction for household size, this can more than double the payment.
It can come as a rude awakening at the end of the “honeymoon stage/first year of marriage,” when your student loan payment is so much higher than it was previously. Filing separately can help solve this issue, right? If you file separately in SAVE, it allows you to exclude spousal income, but it also drops them from your household size when your student loan payments are calculated.
Bingo, problem solved. Payments are back to what they previously were before marriage.
But I as a CPA now enter the conversation . . . it’s usually more expensive to file separately, as you lose out on various deductions and credits.
How much more would you end up paying in taxes to file separately vs. jointly? In our experience, filing taxes separately as a married couple can sometimes result in little to no difference in taxes owed. However, there are instances where it can lead to an additional projected tax liability of $50,000 or more. You just have to run the numbers.
Understanding how this impacts your taxes is imperative when you’re running the numbers for student loan payments. If you’re having trouble understanding your taxes, take out the hassle and hire a vetted tax professional.
An example: this couple filing separately would increase their tax liability by $10,000 per year. This $10,000 is effectively an increase in student loan payments. If we calculate the monthly impact, $10,000/12 = $833. Here’s an update to our table.
MFS is still cheaper than MFJ. Yet, MFS is more expensive than filing as a single. This is why some couples will choose to put off legal marriage until their student loans are behind them.
Each situation is different, and you should consider the student loan and tax side when you make decisions. More often than not, couples will marry and file separately even though it may have saved them some money to wait until the student loans were paid off.
Some things in life matter more than money, though. Don't let the financial tail wag the life dog.
More information here:
How Does Married Filing Separately Affect Student Loans?
#7 Amending Tax Returns in Future Tax Years
The IRS allows you to amend your taxes for three years after filing. Because of this, some married borrowers file MFS to get lower student loan payments and then amend their taxes later to MFJ to collect a tax refund, essentially getting their cake and eating it, too.
Loophole or fraud? Certainly it does not appear that the Department of Education and the Department of the Treasury talk to each other about your filing status. It's a gray area, and neither Jim nor I are entirely comfortable with the strategy. But there are lots of people using it to reduce their overall loan cost.
If you’re planning to amend old tax returns, make sure you’ve filed the next return prior to amending an old tax return. Say your payments are based on income from 2023. You don’t want to amend the 2023 tax return before recertifying income using your 2024 taxes. What if the Department of Education does another review of your previous income recertification and sees that taxes have been amended? It may readjust your payment to a higher amount.
Before going down the rabbit hole of amending previous tax returns, it's a good idea to consult a tax professional.
Please note: If you are trying to amend a tax return from MFJ to MFS, you can only do this before the tax filing deadline. But you can go MFS to MFJ later.
#8 Filing an Extension on Your Taxes to Delay Higher Income
As a borrower in IDR programs, you are required each year to recertify your income to stay up to date on payments and in good standing with your loan servicer. During COVID, payments were suspended, and the annual income renewal was also delayed. Many people have been fortunate to have their next income certification delayed into 2025.
There’s a little-known hack where you can delay your tax filing to keep payments lower for longer. This is a strategy you should only employ if you are trying to keep your payments low for PSLF or IDR forgiveness.
If your income certification date falls between April 15 and October 15, you can likely file a tax extension for the current year, forcing the Department of Education to use a tax return showing your income from two years previous.
Suppose you make $75,000 in Year 1. In Year 2, you make $175,000, and in Year 3, you make $275,000. This is a common trajectory for those doctors who will finish training and have income increase exponentially from trainee to attending. Generally, when you recertify your income, the government will use taxes from the year prior. In this scenario, the borrower, now in Year 3, would use the $175,000 from Year 2 to calculate their payments. They certified their income on June 1 of that year.
Suppose this borrower extends their tax filing from April to October. Then, when they certify income in June, they use their most recently filed taxes. It would pull in information from Year 1 when they only made $75,000.
As a result, their monthly payment would be $343 instead of $1,176. Over a year, it saves this borrower $9,996. They could follow this up and do it the next year so their payment doesn’t jump right from $343 to $2,009 but $343 to $1,176.
Filing an extension on taxes can help keep your payments lower for longer when income is increasing. However, it still requires you to have paid all of your taxes come Tax Day in April.
Numerous strategies exist to help lower your payments and optimize your student loan management, ranging from controversial to straightforward. Regardless of your stance on these methods, you’re likely to find valuable tips that can save some of your hard-earned money.
What do you think? Are you using any of these strategies? Which methods do you think are ethical and which ones are not? Do you have questions about this?
To your point #3 when comparing pre-tax vs roth, I wonder if it helps to view student loans as adding roughly a 10% “tax” (SAVE uses 10% of your discretionary income to calculate your monthly payments). So a marginal tax rate of 22% during training becomes 32% on this income driven repayment plan. What once looked like a year you would favor Roth at 22% may instead be a year you favor Pre-tax contributions. Especially for those going for PSLF and trying to minimize their payments over time.
Jon,
Good point. Another consideration I see for residents is having lower payments when income is usually the lowest of their career can be helpful.
Andrew SLA
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. The Roth vs traditional decision is quite long term adn the student loan decision is relatively short term by comparison, making it hard to decide. Complicated stuff that depends on assumptions that may turn out to be quite wrong.
But more PSLF is certainly superior to just improved cash flow as far as a benefit of using a tax-deferred account over a Roth one goes.
I would argue that you left out the most controversial student loan management technique…. Investing extra income vs repaying student loan debt.
Now if the student loans are taken out at a high interest rate this is typically not a debate. However many of us took out student loans 15-20 years ago and had a rate less than 2%. We had a frequent debate as to whether we should just pay down the student loans as quickly as possible or invest the extra income as we were likely to have returns far greater than 2%. The math of course argued for investing the extra income. But the behavioral side of the argument was always to pay off the student loans as quickly as possible to be out of debt.
In my case, I chose a hybrid of this technique as my wife and I left our respective graduate schools with >$300,000 in student loan debt. I could have long since paid those loans off. And I did make a couple large payments over the years. But 15 years out, I still have about $45,000 in student loan debt that I am making miniscule payments on. I always keep >6 figures in my bank account and have a net worth of approximately $10,000,000 at this point. So I could pay off the last 45K any time I choose. But the “trade” over the past 15 years has been too financially beneficial for me to finally pay off the little debt that we have. So I continue making $600 payments ever month with dollars that are worth far less than they were in 2010.
This was a frequent debate we used to have on this website when student loans were at a very low rate. We haven’t had it much recently since loan rates are so high. But it was always a controversial topic with some very strong opinions on both sides.
NapoleanDynamite,
Yes, this wasn’t included when it certainly could have made the list. The invest vs pay down down approach is all over the blog and website. A couple of the above strategies are very niche and I see relatively few docs and borrowers that are aware of all of these options.
I’ve met with a lot of docs who are in your camp that borrowed at 1-2% for medical school. Hard to pay those off when you can make more in the market. It really is a personal decision at that point. If the debt doesn’t bother you, than continue to pay the minimum. If it does bother you, then pay it off in a shorter amount of time that required. I generally advise a hybrid approach where you pay down the loans in the shortest amount of time possible but save enough to hit your savings/retirement goals.
With interest rates for students at 8-9%, it is harder to justify paying the minimum on your student loans unless you are going for PSLF.
Andrew SLA
I’m not sure the arbitrage on $45K is really worth the hassle to a decamillionaire. I mean, let’s say you make an extra 2% on your $45K, that’s $900 a year, maybe $500 after tax. Meanwhile your net worth is fluctuating by >$100K every day in the markets.
Congrats on your success though.
In response to #5 – I didn’t realize that you could use a pay stub to recertify income. I was under the impression that they require IRS records and use the AGI from your tax return as the primary means by which to calculate the IDR payment amount.
For example, if someone had a PSLF qualifying W2 job with a year or two left for PSLF forgiveness, as well as a successful side business, wouldn’t taxing the side business as a C-Corp and forgoing taking a personal salary for a couple years until the loans are forgiven be a reasonable choice? I realize that there will be double taxation with a C-Corp, but that could theoretically be considerably better than having to pay for a huge spike in an IDR payment if you are taxing the side business as an S-Corp with salary and distributions that could raise the AGI and therefore result in a potentially large spike in the IDR payment.
Jeff,
Yep, this is a strategy I see some do to lower AGI. I also know a fair amount of docs with a spouse in real estate and they have all sorts of methods to drop income through depreciation and deductions.
Andrew SLA
Yes, that would be a variation on this technique.
The fundamental questions to ask would be: Why do I have to pay so much for a professional degree? Are there any other options besides taking out loans? If those options are exhausted, then worry about the technical details of managing student loans. Also when paying off student loans, never, ever compromise your physical and mental health for the sake of paying it off faster. For example, the last thing a person wants to do is to take a toxic job with seemingly high pay in the hope of paying off student loans etc. Don’t ever do it!!! Anybody with a decent income (6-figure doctor/lawyer income) and if you live a like thrifty immigrant, anybody could pay off 250k to 300k student loans in a few years. Once it is paid off, the freedom is yours.
April,
Professional degree programs are very expensive. But the ROI can be great. There are not many options outside of taking loans if you don’t have money coming from family or a large amount of money from a previous job. Federal loans are the best option if you can’t pay for it all up front because of the flexibility and opportunity for loan forgiveness.
If a doc doesn’t work in public service after training, they can take the approach of living like a resident and being out of debt quickly after training.
Andrew SLA
That is sadly true for people who pursue professional degrees with little family savings etc. The public service could potentially be a trap as governments and big non-profit institutions tend to have higher degree of toxic working environments. When searching for jobs with heavy student loan burden, how pleasant and sustainable working environment could be sometimes is equally important as the paychecks. On the other hand, most health care systems are not very new doc friendly anyway. It may be worthwhile to keep your options open to get out of the grinding clinical settings before burn out. In that sense, paying off student loans ASAP could mean freedom of choosing your careers later in life. Also there are increasing number of providers who opt out of dealing with insurance altogether and just do cash business directly with their patients.
April,
Public service work environments can be toxic. But I’ve met with hundreds who work in public service and absolutely love it and don’t have toxic work environments. It’s a very case-by-case situation.
I do know if the only reason you’re working in public service is for loan forgiveness, it can be a risky proposition. You have to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Andrew SLA
“Imagine borrowing $300,000 and only paying back $100,000—just 30 cents on the dollar. “ — This makes sense to do so and you’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.
However it isn’t good public policy to have people making $200k+ / year getting this benefit. In some sense janitors are paying taxes for doctors to have their loans forgiven. This is somewhat misleading as most tax revenue comes from higher income earners, but still has some truth to it.
It may last, though. It isn’t as unfair as the carrried interest loophole that lets billionaire hedge funders pay a lower marginal rate than doctors.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your view of good public policy. That said, hate the game, not the playas.
Leaving Your Job and Recertifying Income to Lower Your Payment to $0 – are there any rules or guidelines that this actually violates? How is this “potentially fraudulent?” I think this is just following stated conditions of the loan program. I can not find any information that you must recertify if your income increases before the year is over
James,
If you’re going to be out of work for 6 months+, I can see recertifying to zero dollar payments. If you already have another job lined up after a month break, better to keep the payment as. There isn’t a rule that you have to recertify income when income increases.
Andrew SLA
It’s potentially fraudulent because you’re saying you don’t have income when you do. It’s controversial. That means not everyone agrees on whether it’s okay to do that (legally and/or ethically) or not.
If you are between jobs you do not have income for that period of time. You may have enough savings to continue payments but you do not have income.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. The issue is being out of work for two weeks and then adjusting your student loan payments for a year because of that.
I guess the question at hand here is, how long do you need to be out of work to adjust your payments? I think most would agree 2 weeks is too short and 6 months is definitely okay. So where is the line? The loan repayment terms don’t care. Is 2 months okay? 3 months?
Now you know why it’s included in a list of controversial techniques.
Since this is under controversial, theoretically how far can we take this? Switch jobs/take leave 1 month every year and call the servicer every year during that month to drop payments to $0? Fast forward 20-25 years and you’ve made little to no payments and the entire balance is forgiven.
I suppose one could do that. Perhaps the issue is that the DOE doesn’t have the enforcement teeth the IRS has.
Controversial is the right word. Reading about these strategies (mostly the generous forgiveness stuff) for some reason really gets under my skin. I’m surprised by my visceral response to this post. Call me old fashioned but I’m in the camp of “you borrowed it, by hell you pay back every single red cent”. If you don’t have the integrity to do so, I don’t want you to have any part of my healthcare plan.
#7 is interesting to me. I have consulted multiple tax professionals and its completely fine to do this strategy. Your main competition all recommends doing this strategy. It is a legal loophole, same as the backdoor roth, which you clearly have no problem telling people to do on this site.
Not sure what you’re arguing. Are you arguing this one is so legit it shouldn’t even be on a list of controversial techniques? I’m hardly alone in viewing this as a controversial student loan management technique.
Do you really think the average American seeing someone using this technique to get their cake and eat it too because the Treasury and the DoE don’t talk to each other is going to be okay with it?