This 32-year-old sales analyst ‘didn’t have a whole lot of faith’ Biden would forgive student loans so she spent the pandemic aggressively paying them back. Now she’ll get about a $10,000 refund.

TJ KeasalCourtesy of TJ Keasal TJ Keasal spent the pandemic aggressively paying down her student loan principal.   Last month, Biden announced a plan to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower.   The forgiveness plan allows for TJ to request a refund on the $9,500 payments she’s made.

  Last year, TJ Keasal began documenting her approach to aggressively paying down her student loans while interest was frozen.  Keasal, a 32-year-old sales analyst and optimization specialist in Indiana, told Insider she’d been closely following news and updates on student loan forgiveness proposals since the 2020 election campaign.  In 2021, Keasal began aggressively making principal payments on $41,000 in student loans because forgiveness was “a big what-if.

“”What if we’re really asking that politicians come and be saviors and I didn’t have a whole lot of faith or trust,” Keasal said she told herself at the time.  A few months before President Joe Biden announced a debt relief plan that could forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans for borrowers like Keasal, a Pell grant recipient. Just in case Biden didn’t follow through with his 2020 campaign promise, Keasal said she decided that instead of directly paying back her principal, she would put the money into a savings account designated to pay back the loan.

<<accurate?In the days before Biden announcement laid out a sweeping plan to "cancel $10,000 of student debt for low- to middle-income borrowers," Keasal said she monitored Twitter, and news sites waiting for the official announcement.  "As soon as I saw it, I go, 'This is not a drill. This is not a joke,'" she said.

 The plan would forgive $10,000 for individuals who make less than $125,000 and married couples who make under $250,000. Pell grant recipients are eligible for $20,000 in forgiveness if they make less than $125,000 or $250,000 for married couples. Given that borrowers who made payments during the payment pause, which started in March 2o20, can reach out to their loan servicer for a refund on those payments, Keasal is eligible for a refund on more than $9,500 that she paid towards her loans throughout the pandemic.

Keasal plans to use this opportunity to financially secure her future. “It’s probably not sexy or fun or entertaining,” she said.  She plans to use part of the money she’d already set aside for her loans to max out her Roth IRA contributions for the year, beef up her emergency savings budget, and pay off her car so she can gift it to her mom as a “thank you.

“”She made the sacrifice to make sure that I has a vehicle when I graduated because vehicles break down and mine broke down right before undergrad graduation and I was in a different state, so I needed a vehicle to get around,” Keasal said. “So I’m excited to be able to pay mine off and she’ll have a paid-in-full vehicle to drive around reliably. “Despite the current economic climate, Keasal said she’s still young and investing now means “compound interest” is on her side.

“This is a really rare moment in time where it could have a lot of upside for you or it could kind of be squandered away if the money is just spent with emotion versus some intention and then some emotion,” Keasal said.  She still plans to treat herself. Keasal said aggressively paying down her student loans has meant she had to forfeit opportunities to travel to visit friends, and now with her loans paid off, and extra cash from making payments throughout the pandemic, she thinking about making some visits.

 Overall, Keasal said the debt forgiveness has helped her get one step close to financial stability.  “For me, I think it brings the light at the end of the tunnel and what I would think of as financial stability, not necessarily freedom. When I think of financial freedom – 100% – I think of a person not having to actually earn an additional dollar, but their life is funded based on whatever investments or holdings they may have.

So I won’t necessarily be free in the immediate future, but true stability at least for me – it’s right there. “Read the original article on Insider.