The following is from the email that was forwarded to me:

The College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 established a new public service loan forgiveness program. This program discharges any remaining debt after 10 years of full-time employment in public service.

Starting July 1st, individuals with student loans will also be able to enter into an Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan that will lower their monthly payments based on a debt to income ratio.

More information at: http://www.ibrinfo.org/

Public Service Loan Forgiveness is a new program for federal student loan borrowers who work in certain kinds of jobs. It will forgive remaining debt after 10 years of eligible employment and qualifying loan payments. (During those 10 years, the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan can help keep your loan payments affordable.)

Who can get Public Service Loan Forgiveness? This program is for people with federal student loans who work in a wide range of “public service” jobs, including jobs in government and nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations.

What are eligible jobs? In most cases, eligibility is based on whether you work for an eligible employer. Your job is eligible if you:

• are employed by any nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization;
• are employed by the federal government, a state government, local government, or tribal government (this includes the military and public schools and colleges); or
• serve in a full-time AmeriCorps or Peace Corps position.

If you don’t meet these criteria, the Department of Education’s regulations create a two-part test of other circumstances under which you may still be eligible:

1. your employer is not “a business organized for profit, a labor union, a partisan political organization, or an organization engaged in religious activities, unless the qualifying activities are unrelated to religious instruction, worship services, or any form of proselytizing;” and,
2. your employer provides any of the following public services: emergency management; military service; public safety; law enforcement; public interest law services; early childhood education; public service for individuals with disabilities and the elderly; public health; public education; public library services; and school library or other school-based services.

These definitions of eligible jobs reflect the Department of Education’s final regulations for PSLF, as posted in the Federal Register on October 23, 2008.

What kinds of loans does it cover? It covers federal Stafford, Grad PLUS, or consolidation loans as long as they are in the Direct Loan program. Borrowers with loans in the Guaranteed (or FFEL) loan program must switch to the Direct Loan program to get this benefit.

When does the 10-year clock start, and which payments count? Only payments made after October 1, 2007 count towards the 10 years (120 monthly payments, not necessarily consecutive) required for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Qualifying payments are payments made through the William D. Ford Direct Loan Program in any of the following three repayment plans: the Income Contingent Repayment plan, the Standard (10-year) Repayment plan, and the Income-Based Repayment plan. To count, these payments must be made while you’re working full-time in an eligible job. “Full-time,” according to the final regulations issued by the Department of Education, means an annual average of 30 hours per week or the standard for full-time used by the employer, whichever is greater. For people working part-time at two or more qualifying jobs, “full-time” means an annual average of 30 hours across all jobs held. In professions such as teaching, annual contracts that include at least eight months of full-time work will be treated as the equivalent of a full year’s employment. If you meet all the criteria, the earliest your remaining debt could be forgiven is October 2017.

What if I’ve already paid off my loans by then? This loan forgiveness program will only benefit people who still owe money on their federal loans after 10 years of eligible payments and employment. If your income is low relative to your debt, and you qualify for reduced payments under IBR (or Income Contingent Repayment) at any time during those 10 years, you will likely have debt left to forgive.

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Yours Truly,

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The initial creation of the documentation takes some additional time, but I know it will save my employer over the long run. Additionally, my supervisor will eventually be using this program for her portion of the accounting, and she will need good documentation to get her through it.

Having two monitors will allow me to have Word open on one screen, and the accounting program on the other. I can document and take screenshots without having to go back and forth. My mind can sometimes wander from one switch to the next, so it will be a great time saver to be able to simply look from one monitor to the next.

The background image is a photo I took of a coworker’s little desktop Christmas tree, and a dish of chocolate dipped cannola. Oh my goodness, such delicious creations. They were fresh made from a bakery that morning. One day soon I’ll be making that photo into a Christmas card, and will post the results here so you can see it better; it is a gorgeous photo if I do say so myself.

Yours Truly,

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Our company provides today as a paid holiday, but I am working from home.

I have been working on a project at work for the past *two* years. I’m converting our manual accounting to electronic and the program my company purchased is a good one, but an unknown to the point where it’s not possible to get help via the Internet to any real extent. (Read: I can’t google my question and get an answer.) There is an email group, but one of the moderators, a guy who is actually very intelligent and knows the program in and out has taken a real dislike to me. What set him off was I broke an unspoken rule of the group. The software company sells Crystal Reports v10 to go along with their program, and insist it will not work with the newest version, v11. They want you to buy Version 10, for which they charge $200. I did not know the program was not compatible with their program, (funny thing is I’m using it, and it works JUST FINE, so go figure?) and I did not know it was against the rules to let others know there is a company out there that is very helpful to non-profits. Check out TechSoup if you think you might be eligible. They sell Crystal Reports v11 for $34. So I was just letting the others on the list know they could get it at TechSoup if they couldn’t afford to put out $200.

My goodness, the moderator threatened to ban me from the list if I ever did that again. Several people posted in my defense, and I apologized profusely. Then the supervisor of this guy got on the list and defended him. Nice move, guy. If I could, we’d drop this software like a hot potato. I ended up meeting both men at conference. The supervisor must have “short man” syndrome as my 5′4″ dwarfed him by at least 5 inches. He apologized and said the situation was handled poorly, and he told me the moderator was a great guy. I did meet him in person, and my assessment of him is he is just one of those tech people who don’t know how to relate to people.

In spite of our having met in person, he continues to respond to my questions with sarcasm and rudeness to the point that someone always comments on how they thought this list is to get help, not to be belittled. I only post when I’m desperate, and only three times since the conference. The third time he chose to ignore me. Fine.

Support from a trainer runs $120 an hour, and my company can’t afford to put out that kind of money for training. So I’ve had to muddle through the best I can.

We found a company in another state that offers a one year contract of assistance for $1200 per year, unlimited and we contracted with them, unfortunately the person I need to speak with most of all can’t help me immediately and usually when I have a problem I need immediate assistance. It’s usually a problem that stops me cold from going from Point A to Point B, and very often only takes a few minutes to clear up. I’m starting to wish we could afford the $120/hour person as she charges by 15 minute increments, and appears to be much more accessible.

Anyway, my goodness I can sure ramble when I get started. I’m working from home today, because I’ve finally gone live in the Accounts Receivables module. I have been entering data from July, and have to enter all the deposits for this fiscal year so I can start with billing tomorrow.

Unfortunately, things have not gone well this morning. First I attempted to connect to our server at work with my desktop computer, but discovered I cannot do that as I’m only running Vista Basic. Which of course meant I couldn’t connect the software which I’d loaded to my computer to the back end on the server. Our IT guy gave me a copy of Office, but gave me the wrong serial numbers.

After an hour, I got my laptop turned on. It takes me much longer to work with the laptop, because I am not accustomed to the keyboard. I got hooked up to the server, and opened the program and I have been waiting 20 to 30 minutes for each time I click through another screen. For example, I have to sign in to the program, so I had to wait 20 minutes to even get the log in screen. I logged in, and waited another 20 minutes for that to process. In the meantime, I’m trying to update a spreadsheet for my supervisor, and this is also taking 10-15 minutes for each step of the way.

This is aggravating to say the least. I determined I would work for at least three hours, before starting on our personal finances. It’s been three hours now.

So much for working at home today. I can’t forget about our personal finances, because I need to get bills paid. I did manage to get the data entry paperwork in order so at least that is out of the way.

Agh.

Yours Truly,

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I was home to cook, so we ate fast food maybe 2 or 3 times a year – not that we could afford to eat out living below poverty level! I learned to make the most delicious homemade pizza and could rise the dough and bake it within an hour. Almost as quick as the local pizza joint could deliver; but for pennies on the dollar. That little trick really helped when we moved out to the country, where they still don’t deliver pizza!

But now that I’m constantly on the go, I find myself forgetting to do little money saving techniques that I’ve employed all my life, like neglecting to check my grocery store receipts to see if the scanner overcharged me. I am overcharged at least 3 to 4 times each month at various stores. Interestingly, Walmart rarely overcharges. Last week I bought a frozen pizza on sale for $2.99 and was charged $6.98. If I hadn’t looked at the receipt, I’d have been out $6.98. The store manager decided to give me the pizza for free. Some stores in our area will give you the first item free if under $5. It’s a reward to the customer for bringing the wrong price to their attention. And it’s supposed to be a heads up to them that their scanner is wrong for that item. Some stores are real good about changing the price immediately, while others don’t seem to care since most people don’t care that they are overcharged. At one store the clerk acts resentful when I show up at customer service yet again, with a wrong price. She acts like I’m ripping off the store by getting the item free. Well, it’s not MY fault that their scanners and the price on the shelf don’t match up.

I also used to have a lot of time to take things back to the store that weren’t working out. Even little things, for example, my husband recently bought some shirts for himself. He didn’t know that I’ve discovered it is a waste of money to purchase Fruit of the Loom’s “Golden Blend” t-shirts as they are thread-bare out of the package. While folding laundry, I noticed several new thread-bare t-shirts, looked at the tags and mentioned to hubby that these were the wrong kind to buy. He said he wondered why they were so thin. He bought two packages, and we need to take those back and exchange them for another brand, which will last much longer, and they don’t cost all that much more for quality t-shirts. But since they only cost a few dollars per package, and I have so little time, it seems like a bigger ordeal to find the receipt [dh hopefully has it in his wallet], get the t-shirts together and take them back to the store, than to worry about the ten bucks or so that they cost us.

Thankfully most stores that we shop have a 90 day return policy, which gives us some breathing room.

I remember hearing about people who would give away a small dollar item that didn’t work out, rather than return it to the store to get the money back. I couldn’t imagine back then. That is because I had enough time on my hands to locate the receipt, as I’d had time to file it, and time to find the item, the package it came in, and the time to remember to return it. I have unfortunately done the same thing in the past year, but I’ve not let it become a habit.

I hope someday to be in a position where I’ll have plenty of money coming in, and much more time on my hands.

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