Due to recent events, including changes to federally held loans that temporarily waive interest and suspend the obligation to make payments during the COVID-19 crisis, we are recommending that anyone with federal student loan debt carefully review your current and potential future benefits on your federal loans before refinancing. When you refinance your loans, you waive any current and potential future benefits of your federal loans, including temporary waiver of payments that the federal government will provide to federal student loan borrowers, and replace those with a SoFi Student Loan Refinance.
These suspended payments count as qualifying payments under forgiveness programs. You can take advantage of the suspension of payments and interest while focusing your resources on healthy cash flow, building an emergency fund, or paying down bad debt instead.
Ultimately, the decision to refinance a federal student loan right now versus taking advantage of the suspension of payments and interest is a personal decision. This decision could be influenced by future interest rates, which we have no way of predicting. For example, refinancing right now might make sense if interest rates for refinancing are higher in the future or might not if they are lower in the future.