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Released: January 13, 2012

Few options available to help pay off private student loans

Source: Sandra Block, USA Today

Last October, President Obama announced a broad initiative to provide relief for college graduates struggling to repay student loans. In a speech at the University of Colorado in Denver, Obama said the plan will lower monthly payments for 1.6 million borrowers.  Jessica Fernandez won’t be one of them.

Fernandez, 29, of Bridgewater, N.J., was laid off from her full-time job two years ago. She only recently found a job with a temp agency that pays less than half what she had been earning. She and her 8-year-old daughter had to move in with her parents because she could no longer pay the bills, which include student loan payments of more than $1,000 a month.

That would appear to make Fernandez a prime candidate for the president’s loan relief program. However, more than $35,000 of her student loans are private. Those loans, which aren’t issued or guaranteed by the federal government, have few of the protections provided for borrowers with federal student loans.

Read Full Article: Few options available to help pay off private student loans