Free Student Loan Help for NEA Members

Folks who are members of the National Education Association have access to a free student debt navigator program called Savi. This is an online tool that asks you a bunch of questions about your student loans and the rest of your financial situation (income, taxes, marital status, loan forgiveness eligibility, etc.) and then gives you recommendations about loan forgiveness and income-based repayment plans. Once you’ve completed the online part, you can then talk with a student loan “expert” via chat or phone to get additional help. While I haven’t used this, it looks promising and NEA says it’s completely free (including the “concierge” service which is talking with an expert, although it appears as though that part might be free for only one year).

If anyone has used this (or does use this), please let me know about your experience so I can add to this post. One of the frustrating things to me is that I know quite a few NEA members who have student loans and have never heard of this benefit they get for (apparently) free as part of their membership. Please consider spreading the word to folks you know if they are members.

Important Update: Comment from student loan guru David Gourley.

In the last 1.5 years, I’ve helped probably 20 people who were using SAVI, but it didn’t alert/recommend/push them towards the limited waiver. Probably 85% of those folks had immediate loan forgiveness that SAVI’s program wasn’t aware of.

I think on a very basic level it is good, but there are so many situational things that it doesn’t do a good job of keeping up with.

So, it sounds like it’s a good start, and perhaps better than doing nothing, but may not be kept as up to date as it should be.