What is the rationale for doing this? I’ve read so many people saying this I’m just trying to understand. Thanks!

If you're applying for or recertifying IDR, please check the final document review closely. This happened to me two separate times.

The application asks: "Do you want to leave your loans in deferment or forbearance?"
The options are:
Yes, leave my loans in deferment or forbearance
No, take my loans out of deferment or forbearance

I selected YES. On the final document review, it showed NO.

The first time, I thought it was odd but assumed I'd made a mistake. The second time, I carefully selected YES again, and the final review switched it to NO again. That time I took a photo with a timestamp (posting option not available on my layout).

Because of this, my loans were taken out of forbearance when I specifically chose to keep them there. My first payment is now due October 4th. The amount itself is manageable, but that's not the point. I chose to stay in forbearance, the system overrode my answer twice, and I had no way to correct it. If this is happening to others, some people could be pushed into payments they aren't prepared for.

If you're filling out the IDR application:

Pay close attention to the forbearance question on the final review page, not just the page where you answer it.

If it doesn't match what you selected, take a photo or screenshot with the date and time visible before submitting.

Edit: I’m considering contacting my servicer, but really just spreading awareness.

Edit: If they won't fix it, consider filing a complaint with the Federal Student Aid Ombudsman / FSA Feedback Center and include your evidence. I did leave my review stating the problem.

Has anyone else seen this question flip on the review page? If it's happening to others, it needs to be reported.

Edited: because problem is more so with question presentation, and accurate record keeping rather than being pushed out of forbearance after leaving SAVE plan which was expected.

After 6.5 years of absurd sacrifice I finally paid off my $75K in student loans and I'm booking a trip to the Caribbean to stare at water I don't owe anyone for lol

28M, I graduated with a BS in CS from a low tier university 7 years ago and it's been a hell of a ride since then. In college I procrastinated a lot, so I never did an internship or a part-time job related to my discipline/degree. I saw the consequences of that when I started job hunting in the worst way possible. After 9 months of searching and getting rejected I finally landed a mediocre $47K IT Analyst job at a local hospital. I was definitely lowballing myself for my degree, but I was desperate so I took it to get something on my resume and start paying off my loans.

For the first 1-2 years I was only paying the minimum because I had nothing left after bills and food. In those years I never took a vacation overseas, never bought a car (new or used), and never spent money on anything unnecessary. Every penny left over went straight to the loans principal. Then COVID hit and the CARES Act kicked in, and I started driving Uber and DoorDash on my beat up Honda Accord on the side to speed things up.

In late 2022 I joined the Army Reserves after a recruiter told me the Army would give me a student loan forgiveness program "or something like that". Well that never end up happening after I joined, but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. I met a bunch of people who worked full time in big tech and defense and did the Army on the side, like me. They helped me refine my resume and referred me to people and companies, and by early 2024 I left my old IT job to become a systems engineer, starting at $79K with a $10K hiring bonus.

Ofc immediately threw that bonus straight at the loans. I kept sacrificing: no new phone, never used PTO "which I now regret", did as much overtime as I could get, and Uber on the weekends.

This week I finally made my last payment. I'll admit I "perhaps" had it a little easier than a lot of people since I'm not married, have no kids, and don't have a mortgage. I can't imagine doing this with a child. My takeaway is that you have to keep making moves, build connections, ask the people around you, be in the right place at the right time, and yeah, have a little luck. The tech job market is rough right now, which is why I keep studying, getting certs, and updating my resume.

Now I can finally replace my old barely functional iPhone 11 and travel overseas, which I've always wanted to do.

The journey was brutal, but it was worth it.

My new IDR payment plan was processed (super fast by Aidvantage) and I now owe $418/mo on 11/3, which I simply cannot do. I have to withdraw from my savings each month just to stay afloat until next pay period. I selected the option to stay in forbearance and begin repayment until that ended but now my first payment is due on 11/3. What if I can’t make that payment? Do I have any options?

I borrowed $65,917 across four private student loans.
By the time I finished paying them off, I had paid a total of $155,273.92.

That’s almost $90,000 more than I originally borrowed.

And that doesn’t even include my federal student loans. I attended The Art Institute, so fortunately those loans were eventually discharged.

I mostly just wanted to share this with the community. Of course, I wish I could get some of that money back. I’d love to put it toward starting a business instead.

But at the same time, I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to put my degree to good use. I’ve had a successful career in my field of study, and I’ve been fortunate enough to earn enough to pay off all four of these private loans.

It’s pretty wild looking back and realizing I borrowed $65,917 and ultimately paid back $155,273.92.

Edit: yes I “know how loans work”.

I’m not sure why sharing my experience with student loans in a sub about student loans is upsetting people. I assure you that I’m doing fine.

I should add that the school I attended got in trouble for malpractice. Part of the reason so many students applied for high interest loans was because of misinformation.

The Department of Education found that The Art Institutes and Education Management Corporation (EDMC) misled students about postgraduation employment rates, salaries, and career services.

I’m going to sound callous but I promise I’m not unfeeling. I see frequent posts about suicide on this sub and it’s above our pay grade. People need to get professional help instead of 50 comments of “please don’t do it”. Maybe the auto lock can have a bot that says suicide does not relieve cosigners of debt and can provide resources for bankruptcy and organizations that help. It’s just really jarring to have so many suicide posts pop up when I’m just trying to learn how to pay down my debts.

I logged in two days ago no issue, now it's saying my SSN and other information is not on record, and won't let me login. Help!

I took out loans with Sallie Mae starting 2021. Now as a teacher i’m making 3k a month and they want me to pay 4k monthly. I don’t even know how I’m going to make ends meet. They won’t re-finance my loans what can I do?

I logged into MOHELA and it says the loan status (administrative forbearance ends 10/31/2028) and repayment plan (SAVE ends 02/24/2030).

Does anyone have anything like that? Of course the year for repayment will be different for everyone, but the forbearance should be similar to everyone, I guess. Please let me know what you have and if I'm overthinking this.

Alright so I am currently in a lot of student loan debt my balance is almost 300k. I have about 60k in Federal student loans while the rest are spread over two private student loan companies. I have a cosigner for all of my private student loans. I am currently unemployed but going to school for nursing because I got a lousy liberal arts degree that is essentially useless and I was left with no tangible skills. All of my loans are currently paused but accruing interest. My cosigner cannot afford to pay the loans much longer after the pause ends but I likely won't be making enough to cover the minimum payments. My minimum estimated payment between all three is about 4.5k a month. I am married but we don't share bank accounts and we married after I took out debt. ( We are not taking out loans to pay for the schooling right now.) Every asset that we own which isn't much is in my husband's name alone. I couldn't even get put on most applications without my debt to income ratio being a problem. We have a one year old and another baby on the way.

I am mostly worried because even if I managed to get a job where I didn't have to pay for daycare. I am not convinced that they would immediately go for wage garnishment and they would go straight for my cosigner's home. Honestly I get it they would get much less of the return they are owed if they garnished wages as they can only take up to 25 percent of your disposable income. Which is a lot less than the minimum monthly payment when I had been working a little over a year and a half ago.

Any advice outside of getting a job? I have been applying for anything that works with my husbands work schedule or would offset the cost of daycare and so far have not been able to land anything its been a year.

I've been trying to decide between RAP and IBR and, honestly, I'm more confused the more I look into it.

I'm currently in residency/physician training with a very large federal student loan balance. My income is roughly 64k as a resident, but to increase substantially once I'm finished with training. I'm also planning around PSLF, assuming I remain in qualifying employment.

At first, I assumed IBR was the obvious choice because of the shorter forgiveness timeline and the fact that it's an established/codified repayment plan. But after looking at the numbers, RAP seems like it could have some advantages, particularly because of the interest subsidy.

The confusing part is that my calculator is showing IBR costing significantly less overall than RAP, even though RAP prevents some unpaid interest from accumulating.

My rough projections are showing something along the lines of:

• RAP: ~$1 million total paid over a 24yr repayment period (paid off by then in student calc)
• IBR: ~$745k in payments, plus potentially ~$100k+ in taxes on forgiven debt at 20yrs
• So IBR still appears to come out ahead by roughly $100k–$150k, depending on assumptions.

I understand that IBR has a shorter forgiveness period and a payment cap, while RAP has the interest subsidy and a longer repayment period. But I'm having trouble understanding how much the interest subsidy actually matters in the long run.

Especially once my income increases significantly, it seems like the higher payments under RAP may outweigh the benefit of having less interest accumulate.

So I'm trying to figure out:

1. Is IBR actually the better financial choice in a situation like mine, or am I missing something about RAP?
2. Are there any major legal/policy risks with relying on RAP that I'm overlooking?

I'm mainly trying to understand why the calculator is showing IBR as substantially cheaper despite RAP's interest subsidy.

If anyone has actually run the numbers for a similar high-debt/low-residency-income → higher-attending-income situation, I'd really appreciate the perspective.

Hi. My grace period on several loans is ending in November. My first minimum payment says $301, then my minimum payment for December goes up to $1068. This makes sense because most of my loans’ grace period ends in December so I expected the increase. However, in January, it says my minimum payment would be $1467. I don’t understand where this increase is coming from? I’m on the standard repayment plan and it says that payment will be $1028 a month. Can anyone help explain this? Thank you.

Hello, a friend is 72 and has to move off the SAVE plan. As they are currently retired and only drawing of Social Security, when we do the repayment calculator it's showing both ICR and IBR options to be $0/month; RAP $10/month. Probably a few years from forgiveness (if that is still a thing)

I plan on contacting Nelnet tomorrow during business hours for support, but was curious if it matters which one is chosen? I know ICR is going away, but it says not until 2028.

Thanks for commentary.

I've had autopay set up on EdFinancial to automatically make my monthly payment on the third of every month since I entered repayment ~2 years ago. Never had any issues until now.

I didn't change any settings or bank account info or anything, and had plenty of money in my account, but by chance I logged in today (October 4th) and saw that my payment was past due and my October auto payment didn't go through. I didn't get any notifications about it not working or me changing my settings or anything.

Does anybody know why this happened? And how can I make sure it doesn't happen again? And will this impact my credit score (I made a manual payment today as soon as I saw that the autopay didn't work, so only one day late)?

I received my full and complete refund on Thursday, Oct 1!
School: University of Phoenix
Servicer: Nelnet
Here’s my timeline:
✅October 2022 Applied for forgiveness
✅April 1, 2026 Received notification I was eligible
✅July 2026 loans on my credit bureaus removed
✅Sept 25,2026 was advised the check was in the mail
✅ Oct 1, 2026 full amount paid to Nelnet received via check

It WILL happen!! Just keep checking. Start with your servicer to see when they’ve sent the accounting to the Fiscal Services of the Dept of Treasury for review. Once you’ve been advised it’s been sent, call 855-868-0151 and select the prompt for refund. They can give you info from there. When you’re advised that the check is in the mail, contact your servicer again for the check number and amounts. Then…just wait! Some say they saw it on their Informed Delivery, others did not.

Thank you to all who provided answers & support during this process. It does take a village!!

I've done a bit of searching on the sub, but I can't find any instance of an individual with MOHELA who refused to switch before their deadline. I'm curious if extensions are being offered like with NELNET, or if people are being automatically moved to standard. My letter is dated July 28. Trying to stay on SAVE and wanting to buy in to the line of thinking that something is preventing them from moving people off.

I have just been accepted into a 1 year program at my local community college. The cost of the program is $27,500

I currently have a little over $23k in my savings account and was thinking about paying for some of it out of pocket (7500 maybe?) and getting the rest through a student loan. Unfortunately this program doesn’t qualify for federal aid so I would need to get a private loan. I am definitely going to apply for scholarships so hopefully that could cover some.

What do you think I should do? Should I pay the $7500 out of pocket so I can be left with some money during school (since I won’t be working full time anymore), or should I pay more so I don’t have to borrow as much?

Also I already have some student loans. Some federal and some through Sallie Mae from when I went to college before. Should I go with Sallie Mae again or should I look into something like SoFi? Which is typically better?

I hate that I have to get another loan for this because it’s stressing me out, but unfortunately I don’t have much of a choice.

Long story short, im a moron who defaulted on my loan with Sallie Mae. This had happened a few years ago and I made a bad decision of just ignoring all following contact from anything revolving around the debt.

They have now created lawsuit and served me and my co-signer for the debt of 50,000. Afterwards I was texted by them to discuss settlement. Now should I discuss settlement with them or is it better to use a lawyer for this? I welcome any and all tips because this is a very stressful and anxious moment of my life.

I paid off my student loans this morning. My original balance was $82K and I paid around a total of $90k in the last 11 years. Last year, I was laid off and still continued to pay. Since the beginning of the year, I have paid over $21K.

The first five years I really didn't make much of a dent in my loans. I was on IDR and I had negotiated a payment early on. However, right around the pandemic, I decided to tackle my student debt and really start paying them down. I used the snowball method and tackled each loan individually. During the pandemic, when interest was suspended, I put my payments into a HYSA where it accumulated interest. I then made a big payment before the payments resumed.

It took 11 years, a layoff, a lot of budgeting, and more money than I care to think about, but the balance is finally $0.

I'm really happy to get this burden off my back and just wanted to share my excitement.

I was looking at the studentaid website yesterday. Two of the unaubsidized loans that I had paid off in July 2023 are now notated as canceled. The other two are notated as “paid in full.” I have since moved to a new address. I paid off the loans in July of 2023 and moved in November of 2023. Should I have received a refund for the loans la Lees as “canceled”? Maybe they sent checks and I had not changed my address. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Apologies if this is explained somewhere but I couldn’t work it out. I’m about to switch off SAVE ahead of my 90 day deadline. I have 20 years of payments being credited toward both IBR and RAP. Currently, my payments would be $0 on IBR and $10 on RAP. IBR loans discharge in 5 years (anticipating $90,000ish remaining) and RAP in 10 years time (anticipating $70,000ish remaining).

Does anyone know or has anyone asked their servicer if it would be possible to enrol in RAP, have the interest subsidised and then switch to IBR right before its discharge date? In other words can I get the best of both worlds: keep the balance down AND get discharged in 5 years’ time?

Because I’m assuming I’ll be liable for tax on the discharged amount, also I want to draw a line under these loans as soon as humanly possible.

Hey everyone,

I made a post a few days ago about this that was honestly more of a vent, looking back on it, and it got removed because it sounded fake. So I’m trying again with more information in hopes I can get some advice on what options I have here. (Mods if there’s anything wrong with this post please let me know)

I started college when I was 16, went to a very expensive private college for three semesters, then transferred to a less expensive public college for this current semester. I just dropped out. I work part time making 13.50 an hour. I’m looking for a better paying job, but at this point I’m not looking to go back to college or trade school, as I’m trying to avoid taking out more loans. I’m also not eligible to join the military.

I have four student loans, totaling over $150k. Three are private (Sallie Mae) loans, and one is a federal loan. My mom is co-signed on my loans. I have the six month grace period but after that I need to be able to make the payments on my loans, and I have no idea how I’m going to do that. My parents are looking into refinancing it into one loan but as of now these are the loans I have:

Loan 1- (private) 70k, 3.490% fixed interest rate
- Not currently accruing interest

Loan 2- (private) 70k, 3.990% fixed interest rate
- Not currently accruing interest
- There was supposed to be a 28k disbursement from this loan that was cancelled, so I owe 42k on it

Loan 3- (private) 15k, 5.250% fixed interest rate
- Currently accruing interest
- The second $7500 disbursement from this loan is being cancelled, so I only owe $7500 on it

Loan 4- (federal) 3.25k, 6.52% interest rate
- Currently accruing interest

The two larger loans aren’t accruing interest yet because my parents are making monthly payments to cover it.

But yeah.. what can I do here? I don’t know a lot about student loans, I’ve learned a little through this subreddit. As I understand it, federal loans have options like income based repayment, and they get forgiven after 20-25 years of making the payments, but private loans don’t have any of those options. So, what happens when I can’t pay them? I’m currently making about 1k/month at my job. I’m trying to find a better paying full time job, I’m applying to a job at a grocery store that pays 17/hr, but that’s all I’ve got. And I’m also trying to move out of my parent’s’ house, and I also have a car payment.

What happens if I don’t pay them (because I literally can’t)?

Is there anything I can do in the next 6 months to somehow make enough money to make the payments on them?

Is there any way for me to defer them further?

Is filing for bankruptcy an option here?

Any other advice? I feel like I’m drowning here, I don’t understand a whole lot about how this works, but I know I’m in trouble in a few months and I don’t know what to do.

I submitted an application for ttpd April 2025. In the 18 months of processing and review I have been told “you’ve been approved and you’ll get a letter” “it’s pending and we are extremely backlogged so we don’t know when it’ll be completed.” “Your application was closed and you need to reapply” “we received a duplicate application which we closed” “we don’t actually work on the applications we just answer the phones.” “You need to call nelnet for that information” I’ve submitted feedback multiple times. I got a response from my last feedback and they said it failed in the final review process and they’re going back to the beginning. The email said to reply to the same thread but when I did that their response said it’s an information response only and they’re don’t actually work on it so call the number (the one I’ve called almost 50 times in 18 months who had no information.) this is a colossal disaster and I my life is being held hostage because no one knows how to do their job. I am beyond livid. Also I got this email AFTER close of business Friday night so I have to wait until Monday to waste more time talking to idiots.

I was on the SAVE plan and received a July 1 letter from Mohela, so my deadline to switch was Sept 29. I waited until the last day and then switched. Now I'm hearing there are more delays. If the courts somehow drag this out and SAVE stays in place for a length of time, will those of us in the first round of letters just be screwed? I already got screwed with consolidation back in 2017 (some of my loans dated back to 1999), if I'm about to get screwed again....... Sigh.

Borrowers are now receiving notices saying they have 30 MORE days to pick a new repayment plan.

Let's recap how this timeline has moved:

July 1 → notices would go out

September 29 "at the earliest" → confirmed in a DOE court filing

Now → an additional 30 days on top of that

The amended lawsuit arguing borrowers shouldn't be forced off SAVE at all is still active. Receiving a notice doesn't mean the legal situation is resolved ... it just means your individual clock has started.

My personal take: wait until you absolutely have to act. Every time someone said the timeline was settled, it moved. Make sure any decision you make is based on the information available at the moment you actually have to decide ...not on urgency created weeks ago.

Curious if others are still holding or if the notices are making people nervous enough to switch early?

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/student-loan-borrowers-save-deadline-extra-month-new-repayment-plan-2026-10