How to Pay Down Perkins Student Loans Through the Peace Corps

Joining the Peace Corps offers volunteers a way to travel overseas, learn a foreign language and enjoy meaningful interactions with people of other cultures. Another benefit of joining the Peace Corps is student loan forgiveness at different levels.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Get a percentage of your Perkins student loan forgiven. For the first year of completed service, 15 percent of the total of your Perkins loans are canceled.
2. Serve for 2 or 3 more years to receive additional debt forgiveness. An additional 15 percent or your Perkins loan is canceled after the second year and 20 percent of subsequent balances are canceled after the third and the fourth year. This equals a 70 percent loan cancellation after 4 years of service.
3. Learn how the process works. At the end of your service, you receive a readjustment allowance check. You may use up to 75 percent of the allowance for paying down your student loan. The remaining 25 percent is to help pay for expenses such as finding a new place to live or looking for employment.
4. Use your monthly stipend to pay down your student loans. Before entering service, designate all or a portion of your monthly stipend to pay down student loans. If you don't designate the deductions, your student loans will not be paid down by volunteering. You will be issued a check for the full amount instead.

Tips & Warnings

• Get your loan deferment paperwork in order before you leave.
• There are only two requirements for joining the Peace Corps.You must be over 18 and a U.S. citizen.
• You must be able to pass an FBI background check to join the Peace Corps.
• You must fill out your deferment paperwork on your own. The Peace Corps does not do this for you.
• Only Perkins loans qualify for cancellation through Peace Corps volunteering.

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