Denied

Fall semester: day sixty-three

I received a letter in the mail last night that denied forbearance on my loans.

This pissed me off. Mainly because there's no real reason why.

I logged onto the loan servicer's website to see if I could get an explanation. I am still in my "grace" period, of course -- at least for the next five days -- and my first payment isn't due to them until (apparently) December 11, according to the statement I received from them late last month. My balance on my account, therefore, still reads $0.00 owed to them, since I'm still in grace. Try as I might, I couldn't find anything else in my account that said why I would have been denied forbearance unless they're basing it on the fact that I currently have no balance due yet because I am still in grace.

I mean, all of my loan amounts are on there; it's not like they don't know I owe them money. I was trying to be proactive, but maybe I acted too soon.

One way or the other, I had to figure this out and get some answers someplace, so I clicked the "contact us" link, which allowed me to type out a detailed email to them. Here is what I wrote, sent to the "Payments" people (the closest approximation reasonable):

Hi there. I'm hoping I'm sending this to the right department, so bear with me if I am not. I am currently in grace for my student loans until 11/17/2013. Last month, I requested forbearance of a year, as I am currently not employed what would be considered full time; I am an adjunct professor teaching at [University.] I received a statement in the mail on 10/22/13 that said my grace period ends on 11/17/2013, which I knew, and that my first payment on my loans would be $524.40 and due on 12/11/2013. I mailed you folks the forbearance paperwork and my latest pay stub from [University], which states that I make $617.02 every two weeks after taxes, for a combined total of $1234.04 every month. In order to receive forbearance, my monthly student loan payment would need to be more than 20% of my monthly income. At a loan payment of $524.40, that would be 42.49% of my monthly income, well over the amount necessary to receive forbearance. Even taking gross pay before taxes into account ($787.50 every two weeks), the $524.40 loan payment would still be 33.29% of my monthly income -- again well over the 20% needed to receive forbearance. Today, I got a letter in the mail that said my forbearance had been denied for the reason that "Your total monthly payment on your eligible student loan(s) is not equal to or greater than 20% of your total monthly gross income." Again, before taxes, my monthly gross income would be $1575.00, and the $524.40 monthly loan payment would still be 33.29% of that. My question is, is the reason I've not been granted forbearance yet is because I'm still in grace (for the next five days, anyway)? If so, I would like to know how this situation can be rectified so that I can indeed qualify for forbearance when it does apply to me once my grace period ends on 11/17.

Thank you for any help or information you can give.

[Me]

As I was writing that email -- as calmly as possible, I might add -- I'm pretty sure I sort of answered my own question, and have a good idea of what they'll reply -- I'm in grace, obviously. My grace period hasn't yet ended, so until it does, the balance owed is $0.00. If that's what shows up when they run my scans for forbearance, obviously it's going to be denied because right now, I don't owe them anything, and therefore my payment isn't 20% or more than my monthly income.

I am apparently to wait up to two business days for a reply, at which point they'll probably tell me that's the reason why and that I'll have to, once more, submit all the paperwork all over again before they'll approve it. The shitty thing is that this is coming at the worst possible time of the year for me, a time when I won't have access to the office at school, nor will I have access to my printer to print out all that shit again, change the dates on it, and mail it right after my grace period ends unless I do it this weekend, right at the date that it ends on the 17th (Sunday), since surprise! Thanksgiving is coming up and I won't be here in Kansas for a few days, nor will I be on either campus for the span of eleven days or so.

If that's the overall issue, I'll be happy to print out another set of forms and send them along, especially if it rectifies the problem. That monthly loan payment is sixty cents less per month than my rent is. There's absolutely no way I could pay that right now, not unless I magically land a job that pays me about 10x more per year than I make now, or Daisy and I hit the lottery tomorrow. I'm more likely to be killed by a flying cow turd than for either of those things to happen.

By the way, I didn't change those figures for the sake of this blog post -- that is exactly how little I get paid as an English professor, in case you ever wondered. And that's teaching three classes per semester, too.

"If that's what you have to do, instead of mailing them again, fax it to them," Daisy told me.

"It's 2013," I said. "Who has a fax machine?"

"...everyone," she said. "I have one at my office."

"...you work in telecommunications, darling, of course you have a fax machine there."

"There was one at my old job too, and my parents have one...I'm sure the department has one somewhere."

They probably do; I'm not entirely sure, as I can't recall a time when I've ever seen someone use one for anything up there.

Daisy's old job, by the way, was in a credit union, and her father has worked in corporate IT for as long as I've been alive. There used to be a fax machine in the grocery store in which I worked in Missouri, because people who needed to fax something were charged so many cents per page or what-have-you.





Look, I'll do everything I need to do to get that forbearance granted; again, it's not like I make too much to qualify for it. But this is just one more thing added on top of an already overflowing pile of shit to do, a pile that keeps getting larger as the month of November wears on. I was hoping that by sending the form early enough, I would be able to avoid all of the hassle of it, but apparently not. The grace period is the only reason I can think of why it kicked it back at me. I literally make enough to pay the bills and put gas in the car, and that's about it. Monetarily, as you see above, I am waaaaay overqualified to get it -- not the opposite.

"Grace didn't affect my forbearance, though," Daisy told me. "Though it could be because we have different lenders."

We do. Hers is through some company I've never heard of.

"Well, that's literally the only thing I can think of that would possibly stop me from getting it granted right now," I said. "I mean, they know how much I owe. They know what I get paid. It's all out there. They have every bit of that information on the forms I sent in."

"Maybe it's human error then," she said. "Maybe they accidentally put in that you're getting paid that much every week and not every two weeks. Would that mean you wouldn't qualify then?"

"Probably," I said.

I later did the math; after taxes, yes, I would still qualify at 21%. Before taxes -- gross income, overall, I wouldn't, if they put it in that way due to human error. Daisy's right; it's at least possible they screwed it up that way somehow -- even though it says on the form I mailed (I still have a copy of it) that I get $1733.33 a month, or about $800 every two weeks gross -- which is pretty close, actually.

Regardless, I now have two business days to dwell on it and figure out what's gone wrong. In my mind, however, thinking logically, unless they're going off the grace period when I owe nothing, or unless there's been some human error they'll rectify when they receive that email and review my account...I really, really can't think of anything else it could possibly be. I just don't make enough money to not qualify for it. I just don't. It's all there in black and white, really. It's not like I'm lying about it, it's not like I'm trying to trick anyone with anything -- it's pretty straightforward.

"It'll all get fixed," Daisy said, doing her best to soothe me. "It'll all get worked out."

I mean, I know it will somehow, she's right, but...right now it's a huge ball of stress that I absolutely don't need. I sent the paperwork early so that I could be done with it and so that I didn't have to worry about it anymore. All I wanted was for it to be taken care of so that I didn't have to somehow worry about paying a huge bill that I do not have the money to pay. Like, sorry, can't pay it. I don't have the money to pay it. They know I don't have the money to pay it, and they're supposed to fix that for me by giving me forbearance. That's what happens for poor people.

After sleeping on it last night, I'm not as stressed out about it or nervous as I was when I got home to that news after working a twelve-hour teaching day, but obviously it wasn't something I wanted to come home to. It'll get worked out one way or another, because it's not like there's some weird roadblock stopping me from getting it (or at least there shouldn't be), so eh. Worst-case scenario and it takes me past the payment due date to get forbearance granted? I can put the first payment on my Discover card while everything gets sorted out, a card which I've never used and have saved for emergencies such as this (it's also the card with the highest limit). Regardless, there's little I can do about it but wait, now, since I sent that inquiry email last night. I'll check when I get to campus today to see if there's a fax machine in the department somewhere that I could use on, say, Monday, if I have to send all of that paperwork in again. At least it'll get there quickly if I do that, and not through the slow-as-piss mail system.

I also can't get too stressed out about it anyhow because I have way too much other shit going on right now that I have to take care of for my classes and at home. I have all sorts of things to take care of, including three different sets of papers I either have now or will be collecting over the course of the next seven days. This morning it is also nineteen degrees outside, which is the coldest morning of the fall by far. It's supposed to reach the mid-50s today, and be in the 70s again by Saturday, but that's not helping my comfort levels now and it's certainly not going to help my car get started and warmed up this morning on my drive to campus. My allergies, not to be outdone, are going absolutely bugshit over this weather. My sinuses are killing me, and I've blown my nose probably thirty times over the course of the past hour.

On that note, I have to leave the house in 25 minutes, and I'm still sitting here in my bathrobe and slippers. I will update you folks on whatever I find out, of course.