Your future is at stake. With a new education funding alternative developed by Stride, you can ensure your future ability to pay for your education. As a college student myself, I know that we all want a better future for ourselves. Sometimes college is the answer to get the future and lifestyle that we want. College, however, is expensive.

Colleges put a price tag on our futures. Student loans make college all that more possible. Be that as it may, student loans force us to sign a contract - a contract that does not adjust based on changes in our life circumstances or goals. How so? Well, student loans don’t care whether or not we:

need to take a break for personal reasons, business opportunities, or family emergencies
Graduate into a recessionary job market (read: right now!), or
lose our main source of income and can no longer afford loan payments, either temporarily or permanently.

When your life inevitably throws difficulties at you that take a toll on your schooling, why sign a multi-decade loan that assumes everything always works out smoothly? Whether federal aid or through private loans, loan contracts don’t care about you or your future. Whether you drop out or need time off, you are still on contract. This is what you have signed up for.

For example, say you need to take time off for a family emergency. If your student loan funds have already been disbursed, you’ll still need to pay them back, with interest, even if you don’t start or complete that semester. There is no pause button. Say you take time off right before a semester, but your aid has been disbursed, that aid has been “used” and doesn’t go back in the loan bank vault. That isn’t all, now you’re short on funding, as this dispersion of aid has counted towards your allotted aid.

Now, consider an alternative to a student loan: an Income Share Agreement (ISA). ISAs are a new, innovative alternative to educational funding. Stride’s ISA comes with career services and no accruing interest. Stride looks at your future, so they can fund your now. All for your future’s sake. Unlike a loan, Stride funds you in a smarter way. By looking at your chosen major, your goals, and your future career, Stride uses a team of data scientists to take a detailed look at what your future may hold. By doing so, Stride can predict what your future earnings and aid needs may look like. Student loans do not come with this same vantage point of where you are going - they only look at where you are.

That’s not all, with Stride’s ISAs, you are set up with a payment cap, meaning you will never pay back exorbitantly more than you would have with a more traditional loan. How does one use an ISA? Through your Income Share Agreement with Stride, you pay a small portion of your future earnings from your future career for a short period of time (usually 5 years). You are never required to pay during school, and you are given a grace period after you graduate. If things take a turn for the worst, you are never required to make payments if you’re earning less than $40,000 per year. This is why Stride works with you through a new innovative, flexible, and affordable educational funding alternative to student loans. Let’s take one last look at Stride’s best features:

Flexibility to pause payments due to life circumstances
Avoid the trap of accruing interest indefinitely
“Don’t have to say no to that dream career”
Minimum income threshold + payment cap together mean you’re never paying too much if you are a high or low earner
Stride-specific benefits vs. other ISAs like career services

Stride has your future in mind, works with you to complete school hassle-free, and most importantly, stress-free. With Stride, payments tied to income gives you confidence that payments remain affordable, no matter your earnings. They invest in you. If you’re a college student, a graduate student, or even considering going back to school, take a look at Stride’s ISAs before you sign that student loan. Your future is at stake, make sure you’re choosing the provider that puts your needs first.

Stride Funding:

https://www.stridefunding.com/

Advertising Article by Desiree Bennett.

Advertising Flyer by Desiree Bennett.

Your Future Stake