The Dutch Education Executive Agency (DUO) will allow more personalization for EU students applying for student loans and will therefore be less likely to have them automatically rejected, a DUO spokesperson said. at NSA. According to the broadcaster, EU students are increasingly winning lawsuits against DUO because of the agency’s overly strict requirements for what it considers part-time work.

EU students who have a part-time job in the Netherlands can apply for student funding here as they are then considered employees. The EU considers it important that employees of the same Member State have the same rights. European law does not specify the number of hours that constitutes part-time work, but DUO has set it at 56 hours per month on its website.

“You see a lot of students are now thinking ahead: I’m not eligible for this. So I’m not even going to apply,” lawyer Jillian van Damme, who has led several successful lawsuits, told NOS. DUO on this point. “Students who do and then get rejected for not meeting the 56-hour standard often leave it at that. And for students who continue to challenge that, it often takes six months to a year before they get their due. “

Meanwhile, students face financial hardship, concentration problems and other mental health issues due to the stress of money and legal proceedings, and sometimes have to go home because they don’t. can’t afford to stay in the Netherlands.

According to Van Damme, all this is completely unnecessary because the 56-hour standard is not included in European legislation. “In the stops, we quickly see that you are well from 40 hours a month.” Lawyer Patrick Folsche, who also won lawsuits against DUO, would even risk it from 32 hours a month, he told the broadcaster.

DUO told NOS it will take a closer look at whether someone who works less than 56 hours still qualifies for student funding. And it will be more transparent on its website that students can get funding even if they work less than 56 hours a month.

According to DUO, around 6,000 EU students received scholarships in the Netherlands last year. This represents approximately 7% of the total number of European students studying here. The agency could not estimate what a more lenient approach to lending would mean for these numbers.

PvdA parliamentarian Habtamu de Hoop said it was good that DUO made exceptions to its 56-hour norm more often. “It’s positive for the mental well-being of international students,” De Hoop said, but added that it shouldn’t come at the expense of Dutch students. “So I asked if the minister had mapped the costs and consequences of a possible influx.”

Dear H.,

Your boyfriend should go ahead and apply for a passport. He is still eligible to receive one, even though he has not repaid his student loans.

You are correct that you can be denied a passport if you owe child support. Parents who owe more than $2,500 cannot get a passport until they pay their obligation. The US State Department may also deny your application or revoke your existing passport if the IRS reports that you owe more than $55,000 in outstanding taxes.

But unpaid student loans, whether federal or private, won’t stop you from getting a passport.

Now for the bad news: your boyfriend probably still owes those loans, even if they don’t show up on his credit reports.

I’m guessing it’s possible his dad or someone in his family paid them if they had access to his account. But that seems quite unlikely. Why wouldn’t they tell your boyfriend they were paying them?

Another long-term possibility is that your boyfriend is one of hundreds of thousands of borrowers who have qualified for automatic student loan forgiveness. But keep in mind that these borrowers represent only a tiny fraction of the more than 40 million people with student loan debt. Unless very specific circumstances apply — for example, if your boyfriend has a permanent disability or the school he attended defrauded students — he probably still owes that debt.

The most likely explanation is that these debts are so old that they disappeared from his credit reports. Typically, a debt disappears from your credit report about seven years after you default on payment. If your boyfriend’s debt has aged relative to his credit reports, he still owes money, even if the default is no longer hurting his credit score.

If it was private student loans, the debt is unlikely to come back to bite him. Private student loans typically have a statute of limitations of three to 10 years, depending on the state. Although your boyfriend still technically owes the money, a collector couldn’t sue him.

But I guess those are federal loans, which don’t have a statute of limitations. These could very well haunt him in the future, even though three decades have passed.

As long as someone has federal student loan debt in default, their name will appear in the Credit Alert Verification Report System (CAIVRS), a database of people who have defaulted on loans made. by the government. When someone’s name appears there, they cannot be approved for a federally guaranteed mortgage, such as a FHA loan or VA loan. No matter how old the debt is, having federal loans in default can cause your tax refund to be garnished. It will also prevent you from getting approved for another student loan.

But perhaps my biggest concern is that your boyfriend’s student loans might affect his social security benefits. When federal loans are in default, the government can seize up to 15% of your retirement benefit, although it must let you keep at least $750 per month.

Unfortunately, accessing information about these old debts may not be easy. Maybe your boyfriend can go to studentaid.gov and create an FSA ID with their social security number to get information about current federal loans and their balances. If he had Perkins loans, he may need to contact the institution he attended directly for this information.

From there, I would recommend that he speak to a student loan lawyer before taking action. Putting a student loan into default can be complicated, especially given how old the debt is. But once he does, he may be able to make low monthly payments or even $0 if he qualifies for an income-driven repayment plan.

While this debt won’t affect your boyfriend’s passport status, it could come back to haunt him when he least expects it. It’s scary to take basic steps, like figuring out how much you owe, when you’ve ignored the debt. But I suspect solving this problem will reassure your boyfriend.

Robin Hartill is a Certified Financial Planner and Senior Writer at The Penny Hoarder. Send your tricky money questions to [email protected].

This was originally posted on The Penny Hoardera personal finance website that empowers millions of readers across the country to make smart decisions with their money with practical, inspirational advice and resources on how to earn, save and manage the money.

• When she graduated from college, the TikTok influencer who goes by Taylor BeepBoop discovered she had $20,000 in student debt.
• She decided to pay it off in a year and made a plan, starting with figuring out exactly how much she owed.
• She drastically reduced her living expenses by renting a closet from a friend and taking side gigs.
• Learn more about Personal Finance Insider.

The TikTok creator and freelance post-production professional who bears his name Taylor BeepBoop online had just finished her bachelor’s degree when she received a strange text from her father minutes after entering his graduation ceremony. “Congratulations, kid. Have fun paying off those student loans,” the message read.

She thought it was a joke.

Until this text, she believed her parents were footing the bill themselves due to a serious miscommunication. She didn’t realize that they couldn’t afford school anymore after some financial difficulties. She started college at 17 and didn’t ask questions signing forms. “I signed the papers, but I was a child,” she says.

“In 10 seconds, I find out that I’m starting my future with a mountain of debt,” the 28-year-old continues, later joking about the summary of her financial history which could be summed up as both “very impressive and very sad”. In one year, Taylor paid off more than $20,000 in debt while working $13 an hour, slightly more than california minimum wage, where she lives. Below, she describes how she did that — and what she wouldn’t do again.

She worked backwards to calculate exactly how much she should pay monthly

For most of her life, Taylor has always been financially conscious. “I remember telling my parents not to buy me any more toys, because I didn’t want them wasting money,” she says. When the 2008

recession

affected, she begged her parents to open a brokerage account for her to invest the money she had in it – at the time, she was only in college.

“When the student loan hit me, it wasn’t hugely devastating; it was almost like I was preparing for it. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop my whole life,” she explains. .

Immediately, she began working on a roadmap to get out of the situation she had been thrown into. Because she knew how detrimental high interest rates can be when trying to pay off debt, she knew she wanted to pay off the loans as quickly as possible. She ran through her numbers with calculators to see how much interest she would pay over time. “It makes me angry,” she said, “so I did whatever I had to do.”

Determined to repay the loans within a year, she calculated how much she would have to contribute each month. “I calculated exactly how much I had to pay every two weeks, every pay period,” she says.

Courtesy of Taylor BeepBoop

She was living below her means and looking for extra ways to earn money

To make these payments, she had to make extreme changes. Working for $13 an hour at a quality assurance company, she had to be extremely creative and diligent about her finances.

When Taylor tells people she lived in a closet during this part of her journey, it’s not just a figure of speech. Both to save money and because it was her only option at the time, she rented the extra closet from a friend for $400 a month. The space barely fits a bed.

She would never spend money on anything she didn’t absolutely need – not even a little snack here or there. She worked overtime most weeks and stayed late at her desk just to eat dinner provided by the company. “Those are not fun memories,” she said.

Looking for ways to increase her income even more, she undertook many side businesses during this time. “I would just browse the odd jobs section of Craigslist,” she explains. She’s participated in focus groups, brain scan research studies, sold clothes, worked as a sales clerk at golf tournaments, and even considered selling her eggs. “I always had the weirdest things going on in my life,” she says. “It looked like I had the most interesting life in the world, but no, I was just living in poverty, that was all.”

Looking back, she wouldn’t recommend most of the hustles she did. “I would probably say they weren’t worth it; I didn’t make a lot of money,” she says. “It was just causing me a lot of stress.”

She tracked all her income and expenses

At the same time, Taylor tracked her earnings down to the last penny. “I would track every payment,” she explains. Using a notebook, she recorded everything that came in and went out. Because she was paid hourly and had so many side jobs, her income fluctuated often, so it was useful to track the details each month.

“I would figure out the absolute bare minimum that I could live off of for that week,” she told Insider, “And put everything else straight into my student loans.”

Now she is trying to help others get out of debt and have a good relationship with money

Now debt-free, Taylor is still implementing many of the financial habits she used to pay off her loans. She still tracks her income and expenses and sets aside a day each month – called “finance day” – to check her money.

In recent years, most of her income has come from her professional career as a freelance post-production professional. She increased her net worth by investing her money in index funds and eventually bought a house in San Francisco that she enjoys renovating and decorating. Over the past few months, she has found success on TikTok, showing his DIY and design skills.

She also wants her friends and other loved ones involved in financial planning. “It’s my mission to get my friends or family to join me, and I teach them about finance day and setting up retirement accounts,” she says, “I don’t want to see these people who are close to my heart drown in it.”

Speaking to others who may be going through something similar with debt, she has simple advice: “Make room for positive interactions to come into your life and try to find comfort in the fact that ‘there are millions of ways to make money.

Muslim students urged the government to keep its promise to offer interest-free, Islam-compliant student loans, as it revealed that nearly 100,000 students had dropped out or self-funded their studies due to a lack of funding. alternatives.

A coalition of MP Stephen Timms, Lord John Sharkey and various charities and Muslim organizations – including Muslim census, National Zakat Foundation and Islamic finance guru – called on the Prime Minister to provide alternative funding to students by September 2022.

In Islam, paying interest – or “riba” in Arabic – on loans is considered ineligible, making it difficult for many British Muslims to pursue higher education without regard to their religious beliefs.

Currently, student loans from 2012 are subject to interest rates dependent on inflation and income.

An interim to study published by Muslim Census last week found that nearly 10,000 Muslim students a year have not attended university or have self-funded their studies since 2012, due to the lack of Alternative Student Finance (ASF).

Among those students is Annesa Mariyam, who gave up an interest-bearing loan in 2014 and has struggled considerably since. She said The independent: “I could not betray my faith and my beliefs – the same beliefs of a large population in England – and take out the interest rate loan. I couldn’t go to college.

“I must have suffered the consequences of working as an unqualified teacher in an underfunded private school, being paid considerably less because I was unqualified, but I expected her to do the same. work and have the same knowledge of the subject.

“Fortunately, I have now found a way to enter the tech industry with self-study and the help of an apprenticeship.”

Other students, like Hana Yousuf, also chose not to go to college because of interest rate loans. She said: “I dropped out of sixth because I know I couldn’t get a student loan, so I didn’t see the point in doing my A-Levels.

She then undertook an apprenticeship and has since completed levels 4 and 5 of her education and training diploma, which is equivalent to her first and second year of college. But, for her last year of university, she finances it herself.

“I’ve saved all my money over the past four years to help pay for my final year of college, but I’ll always be working alongside my studies to support myself and be able to pay for the rest of my gap year.

Ms Yousuf wanted to study psychology first and said, “If I had had the choice, I probably would have chosen a different field, but I had to choose the cheapest option.”

Amina Madaci is currently taking a year off to give herself time to decide whether or not to take out a loan. She said: “I have kept my options open, but if the government does not introduce interest free loans it puts me in a strange financial situation because it means I will have to balance a large amount of work with education. “

In a 2013 speech then Prime Minister David Cameron said: “Never again should a Muslim in Britain feel unable to go to college because he cannot get it. a student loan simply because of their religion.

As a result, a framework was developed in 2014 by government officials and Islamic financial advisers, but the plans were unsuccessful.

In the House of Commons, Mr. Timms said: “Eight years ago the government made a commitment to introduce alternative student loans. Promise still not kept, preventing large numbers of Muslims from entering higher education

“The interest of Riba is forbidden in Islam, as it was in Christianity until the Middle Ages. Some young Muslims postpone college until they have saved up to pay their tuition fees. Some, with heavy hearts, take out a loan and feel bad forever. Others don’t attend at all – this is the reality of young British Muslims today.

Universities Minister Michelle Donelan responded, “We will provide an update on alternative student funding as we conclude the post-18 education and funding review.”

This update is expected in November.

Sadiq Dorasat, co-founder of Muslim Census, said “it is clear that this question is very important to Muslims” because their survey received almost 40,000 responses when they would normally expect a few thousand.

Regarding his hopes for the government’s response, Mr Dorasat said: “First of all, we want there to be recognition of the impact of the delay as more than 100,000 people have been severely affected over the past nine years. last years.

“Second, ideally we want dates and plans for implementing an AAF so people can start planning for their future. “

Ms Madaci, who hopes to study English Literature, said: “For others, where it’s not a problem for them, it would definitely put them at an advantage over me in terms of academic performance and even basics like mental health and wellness. being.

“I really think having ASF would help so many people and university attendance rates would thrive. I speak on behalf of many, many others that I know who are also in a situation very similar to mine.