Good bye SL Debt, My kids for sure will not be a customer.

I settled with Navient at the end of 2025. Unpaid debt fell under the Covid Relief Act and won't be taxed.

This a rough timeline.

2006-2010 -Major University, Out of State Tuition Cost
Jan 2010: Left School, didn't graduate, left with $97K of Private SL Debt. 9 Loans in total

Payments Appeared at $1500 about 6 Months after I left school, I made $10.00 an hour part-time.

Aug 2010-Dec 2017- Forbearance exhausted, Educational Deferment Exhausted. Landed a better job in 2013 but the new payment was about 50% of my income.

Balance Ballooned for $97K to about $213K solely on interest payment. It went from $1500 to $2800.

Jan - May 2018 - Reached out to Navient and tried to setup a payment plan before default they offered interest only at $1900 a month. Reached out to their customer advocate group when I defaulted they offered $1700 interest/principal a month extending the terms of the loan at a per annual basis after I catch up from the default. I did the math back then of like the $15k I would of paid like $2k-3k would actually go principal. At this point I pretty much realized they were predatory. In the current state of things I'd never get out of debt with these folks. I filed a complaint to the CFPB which was pointless, I think I offered a 0 interest offer to pay the balance straight to 0 which would of been like an $800 payment they refused and demonstrated the math of their payment options showing how predatory.

I never provided bank statements, paystubs. I gave them a break down of my "budget" of basically barely meeting ends meet only to Navient. May be had 1 or 2 aggressive debt collectors. Always made an "attempt" with a Navient Collector.

Sep 2018- Charge Off Hits for 9 Loans. Balance was around $240K. My credit score never fell below 600 and I was at 720. Had multiple CC's,car payments.

2018-2024- I got letters from Navient with threats to sue ,several credit agencies trying to collect, may be a 25-40 calls total from random creditors. Everyone one of them recorded, One called me right in the midst of covid and I ripped him a new one. He did me a solid and said he removed my number from being a valid number. I had one loan that I had cosigned with a parent I was paying for and found my number was no longer on the account. Never heard from them again.

I got offers of $99K, $74K,$43K,$35k to settle via snail mail. Plenty of Payment Plans. I never bothered with any of these collectors before the guy removed my number. No attorneys ever reach out to me.

2025- SOL hits debt officially falls off. I had gotten a job offer that required me to not have any delinquent debt. I reach out to a couple of known creditors and find the debt. They offered 35K, went down to $13k for all 9 loans. In these cases I claimed I had to ask around for money and waited it out. When I called back the debt transferred to a different collector. I shopped around until I found the collector, they told me $35k and I again countered below the last collectors amount and was able to land it around $10.5k. Roughly 4.4% of the original debt

So $240k settled at $10.5K, 4.4% of original value.