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Joel Lambdin, 49, received $250,000 in student-loan forgiveness in
January.
It's a result of the Education Department's one-time account adjustments. Lambdin said the relief will allow him to save for retirement while
considering longer term dreams.

Joel Lambdin finished graduate school in 1998 — but as a professional
musician, he was hardly making enough money to pay off his student loans
and his other bills.

So Lambdin, now 49, said his only option to make ends meet was to put his student loans on forbearance — in which he was not making payments, but interest was still accumulating.

"It was just so that I could subsist, so that I could survive," Lambdin
told Business Insider. "With the hope that at some point, I would be
making enough money that I would be able to take them out of forbearance
and start paying them down."

But he grew to realize that the only way he could make a significant dent
in his student loans was by switching careers. Since he didn't want to do
that because he loved working in music, he decided to keep his larger
student loan in forbearance and begin paying off his smaller loan with a
lower monthly payment.

He continued making those payments until the pandemic student-loan payment pause, at which point he and his wife started making a plan of action to
tackle the larger debt once the pause ended. That led them to discover the Education Department's one-time account adjustment initiative, which
allowed the department to evaluate borrowers' accounts and update payment progress toward forgiveness on income-driven repayment plans and Public
Service Loan Forgiveness, including any payments made during a forbearance period.

That account adjustment led to a letter Lambdin received, reviewed by BI,
from his student-loan servicer Aidvantage on January 31 stating: "Congratulations! The Biden-Harris Administration has forgiven your
federal student loan(s) listed below with Aidvantage in full."

For Lambdin, that letter meant his $249,255 outstanding student-loan
balance was effectively wiped out.

"It had started to feel like my fate was being decided for me by the cold
hand of finance," Lambdin said, "and that was a weight that I didn't
realize was there until it wasn't there."

"The feeling was much more like putting down a backpack that was really
full of books that you got used to. And then you put it down, and you're
like, 'Oh, man, that feels so much better.' It's more like that, rather
than sort of a jump-for-joy kind of situation," he said.

While Lambdin is still working to determine what exactly the relief will
mean for him and his wife, he said that discussing retirement is "a much
more present conversation now" because contributing to savings is viable
after the relief. He can also begin to look into buying a home.

The Education Department continues to cancel student-debt through its one-
time account adjustments, a process it plans to complete this summer. Most recently, the department wiped out $7.4 billion in student debt for
277,000 borrowers, some of whom benefited from the adjustments.

Beyond financial goals, Lambdin said the relief is also allowing him the freedom to pursue some of his long-term dreams, including taking a
sabbatical to study with his meditation teacher in India.

"It's something that I wouldn't have been able to even consider doing if
we had to pay off student loans, but without them, it's something that I
can really seriously consider doing," he said. "And so those are the kinds
of things that I think get really lost in the monetary side of the
conversation about debt relief."

'I've been really lucky'
While Lambdin said he feels as though he earned the relief given his
decades of payments, he also recognized that it's not that easy for many
other borrowers.

For example, as BI has previously reported, some borrowers who might
qualify for relief through different repayment programs may not have
gotten it yet due to paperwork backlogs and administrative errors. On top
of that, funding for federal student-loan servicers is strained — meaning
many borrowers face hourslong hold times and cannot get clear answers
regarding their payment progress from customer service.

"There are some real horror stories out there, and I've been really lucky
in that I haven't experienced the kinds of shenanigans that other people
have experienced," Lambdin said. "So I actually feel very lucky that
things have transpired the way they have."

Some of those horror stories include inaccurate payment projections and
delayed billing statements. When it comes to student-loan forgiveness,
some borrowers told BI that their servicer made a mistake with the
forgiveness, reinstating their payments months later.

The Education Department has said it's aware of the challenges borrowers
face and has established an accountability framework to punish servicers
when they fail to fulfill their contractual obligations.

The department is also in the process of crafting its new student-loan forgiveness plan — it recently released the draft text of the rules, which included relief for borrowers with unpaid interest and those who have been
in repayment for at least 20 years.

As for Lambdin, he's still figuring out how to approach life without
student debt hanging over his head. But now he can consider a range of
options, and he can thank the loan forgiveness for that freedom.

"There's a certain amount of waiting for the other shoe to drop because
it's not that I don't trust that it's happening, but just that the debt
has been with me for so long, and then it's not there," Lambdin said. "And
it's something that I think really takes some getting used to."

If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow Business Insider on Microsoft Start.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/a-gen-xer-who-got-250-000- in-student-loans-forgiven-said-he-can-now-finally-start-saving-for- retirement-and-consider-his-dream-of-studying-in-india/ar-AA1nnY8C

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