Questions that may keep you awake about private student loans.
Conversations with borrowers, cosigners, attorneys, and the people who work inside this industry. Episodes will appear here alongside the written answers.
Episode 1 in production
Want to be a guest, or tell your story anonymously? Write to us at hello@gradmerge.com.
August 7, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Getting served with a lawsuit over a student loan is one of the scariest pieces of mail a person can receive. If it just happened to you, know two things: you are not a criminal, and doing nothing is the only…
Read moreJuly 28, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
You have probably done the late-night searching. Income-driven repayment. Loan rehabilitation. Forgiveness programs. And then the fine print, every single time: federal loans only.
Read moreJuly 18, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
There is a specific kind of envelope that makes your stomach drop. You know the one. Maybe a few of them are sitting unopened in a drawer right now.
Read moreJuly 8, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Nobody plans to default. A job loss, a medical bill, a divorce, and a loan with no safety net, and suddenly you are looking at a credit score that does not feel like yours. Here is the good news the shame…
Read moreJune 28, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Most people learn this vocabulary from a collection letter, which is a terrible place to learn anything. Here is the whole glossary in one place, in plain English.
Read moreJune 18, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
One day the letters change letterhead. The company writing to you is not the bank you borrowed from, and you never agreed to do business with them. Here is what happened, and why it matters more than most…
Read moreJune 8, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
When a collector contacts you about a private student loan, the instinct is either to panic or to promise something on the phone. There is a better first move, and it is free.
Read moreMay 29, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
This is one of the most searched and most misunderstood topics in consumer debt, so let us be careful and honest about it.
Read moreMay 19, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
You will find two kinds of confident answers online: “student loans can never be discharged” and “there is a secret loophole.” Both are wrong, and both are expensive to believe.
Read moreMay 9, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Once a private student loan has gone bad, people tend to imagine there is one right answer they are failing to find. There is not. There is a short menu, and the right choice depends on your income, your…
Read moreApril 29, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
People in financial trouble are targeted precisely because they are motivated. Here are the five tells, from people who read this stuff every day.
Read moreApril 19, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Industry data reports that 96.5 percent of undergraduate private student loans made in the 2025-26 academic year were cosigned, according to Enterval Analytics data cited by LendingTree. If you signed one of…
Read moreApril 9, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Many private student loan agreements mention cosigner release: a provision that lets the cosigner come off the loan after the primary borrower meets certain conditions. Families hear about it at signing and…
Read moreMarch 30, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
You found out from a collection call, or from your credit report, or from a letter addressed to you about a loan you had almost forgotten you signed. Now you have to have a conversation, and you are angry,…
Read moreMarch 20, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
There is no loan program for retirement. That single sentence is the whole framework, and it is why financial planners repeat it so often to parents who are quietly draining savings to cover a child’s debt.
Read moreMarch 10, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
A woman once described keeping eleven months of collection letters in a shoebox, unopened. Not because she did not care. Because she cared so much that looking hurt.
Read moreFebruary 28, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Anyone who has run exit counseling knows the script: repayment plans, servicer contacts, budgeting basics, sign here. It is a good script. It is also almost entirely a federal script, for a defensible reason:…
Read moreFebruary 18, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Institutions track cohort default rates on federal loans because they are required to. Almost nobody tracks what happens to alumni on private loans, because nobody has to. Here is what that invisible population…
Read moreFebruary 8, 2026 · Mark McGinnis
Every servicing shop knows its roll rates. Far fewer can describe what actually happens to a borrower in the year after charge-off, because that is the point where the account stops being a customer and starts…
Read moreQuestions that may keep you awake about private student loans.
Conversations with borrowers, cosigners, attorneys, and the people who work inside this industry. Episodes will appear here alongside the written answers.
Episode 1 in production
Want to be a guest, or tell your story anonymously? Write to us at hello@gradmerge.com.
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