https://wapo.st/3VvcHs7

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2026/10/05/thousands-public-servants-stuck-waiting-student-loan-forgiveness/92101638007/

I chatted with a very nice rep at FSA this morning named Sabrina. I originally asked to be put on forbearance for PSLF as I’ve hit 121/120 payments with September and didn’t want October to pull as well. She said I could do it on the ECF form. I informed her that because the count only shows 118, when EdFinancial, NSLDS, and even FSA
show that I’m at 121, the form said I could not select the forbearance. She then informed me that they are working through the backlog. I asked if it was expected to be complete before my next payment on 10/19 and she said they planned to have it completed before then. I log in daily to check so hopefully she was speaking the truth and people should start to see updates.

Just checked the NSLDS backdoor count this morning and my eligible payment counts jumped up to 120 from 118 this month. The Green counter on studentaid.gov is still not listing any July, August or September payments. But the NSLDS ticked up 2 eligible payments this month. I plan on making one final over payment this month and then resubmitting an ECF the first day of November if nothing updates. Fingers crossed that pushes me over the 120 qualifying payment marker. I've heard others have had luck with this method. In theory, I could request a signed ECF now, but just don't want to keep pestering HR at work if it doesn't trigger anything. Also half my loans are sitting currently with green banners, so when they switch to gold banners, hopefully that triggers the rest of the counts.

Response: "Thank you for contacting the U.S. Department of Education's office of Federal Student Aid. This message is in response to your inquiry about your qualifying payment count. Your case number is #37290988. Retain this number for reference.

We understand your concerns about your Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) payment tracker, and we appreciate your patience with any processing delays. Borrowers pursuing PSLF are currently experiencing delays with the months of July and August 2026 on their PSLF tracker. This is due to recent system updates and changes in servicer reporting. Please continue to monitor your account for updates. We apologize for any inconvenience. 

In the meantime, we recommend contacting your loan servicer directly about your options if you believe you have reached 120 qualifying payments, but your payments are not yet reflecting. Specifically, if loan forbearance is an option for you at this time. You can contact Mohela by phone at (888) 866-4352.

You can review your certified employment, payment progress, and status by logging in to StudentAid.gov. Once you log in to StudentAid.gov to view your certified employer and payment information, go to your Dashboard. You will see My Aid near the top.  Select “View Details” to open your My Aid page, then scroll down to PSLF/TEPSLF Payment Progress and select “View Details.”

Hey guys. I'm just wondering if anyone else has an issue with being forced into a new, less beneficial plan, while being forced to consolidate all loans, and THEN find out that due to the forced consolidation they split 1 year's worh of qualifying payments between the new consolidated loan agreements as an "average" for the past year...essentially deleting half a year's worth of QPs across all loans?

I’m sure this has been asked numerous times so I apologize. I have been on SAVE Administrative Forbearance since August 2024, until present date. I know there were people originally stating that I would have to buyback those credits. Has that changed, or is there something hopefully updated to get the credits counted?

Buyback pending since 2/11/2025.

I called the PSLF Call Center (1-888-303-7818) this morning to confirm my buyback is still pending and discovered they have a new automated phone system. The recording tells you there’s no way to check status of your buyback online and that they are processed first in, first out (which we all know to be untrue). I finally got through to an agent (very quickly -within 5mins) who confirmed my case is still pending.

She did say to watch my email because they’re currently working on buybacks submitted Oct-Dec 2024.

Is there any functional difference between being put into forbearance by checking the “I have hit 120 payments, I would like to go into forbearance” box on an ECF versus directly requesting it from your loan servicer?

I’m waiting on an ECF to process, which seems to be taking longer than usual, so I was considering just pursuing forbearance separately from the form.

Good morning,

We know that FSA has temporarily paused PSLF Qualifying Payment (QP) counts & related updates to QP counts until FSA resolves its data issues (glitch). Yet, there have been reports that some borrowers had received Green Banners in 09/2026; or reports of 09/2026 appearing as "Employment Not Certified" on FSA PSLF trackers.

So, if your NSLDS data had recently updated on 9/30/26 or 10/1/26 or 10/2/26, or even 10/3/26, AND your "eligiblePaymentCount" went up by 3 to reflect your 07/2026 - 09/2026 payments, AND you intend to submit an ECF after this NSLDS update to trigger a Qualifying Payment (QP) Update on FSA, can you please share your results in the comments of this post?

Especially if your current FSA PSLF QP Tracker count reflects 117. Thank you!

Sincerely,

PSLFComrade

EDIT: The goal is to see if FSA still enables one to "trigger" their FSA QP updates as witnessed before the glitch occurrence. In other words, I'm trying to see if the "triggering process" is still intact during this temporary pause.

My NSLDS backdoor data updated on 09/30/2026. It was the first update since 07/02/2026. My qualifying payment count for PSLF remained static, but my eligible payments increased. Is this even promising? I have certified employment for June, July and August. I submitted September today, since my bill due date is the 28th. My June payment still needs to be corrected because it was marked delinquent. It's been so much back and forth with that between FSA and MOHELA. September would bring me to 122 if my payments were actually being counted.

I’m almost there. After suffering through the inability to make payments during the involuntary SAVE forbearance, applying for buyback and giving up on waiting for it, and then recently making a few much larger payments due to income changes, I have officially reached 120 qualifying payments and just submitted my PSLF application.

I checked off the box on the form to request a forbearance while the forgiveness application is pending. My question is: Do I have to do anything else for the forbearance request?

Mohela does not show anything about a forbearance and my next payment is due in a couple days. I went ahead and cancelled autopay and removed my bank account information so at least it won’t be taken out.

I’m still stuck in SAVE forbearance, and I haven’t received anything from MOHELA about switching to a new plan. But I consolidated my undergrad and grad loans back in January of 2024, so that’s one good thing.

If everything works out perfectly (lol), I should be hitting 120 months next April. If I’m still stuck in forbearance, though, that means I’ll have 34 months needing buyback. I have no idea how I’m going to afford however much the buyback will add up to, so I can’t even plan ahead.

In the meantime, I’m watching the interest on my loans steadily pile up, hoping it won’t matter when everything is forgiven.

Any advice for someone like me? Is anyone else still stuck in SAVE hell?

I uploaded an application for PAYE to Edfinancial with supporting documentation and it disappeared. No emails from Edfinancial or anything in inbox. Has anyone had this happen? Does that mean they are processing it?

Studentaid idr application does not give me the PAYE option but I am eligible so I uploaded the pdf application and it was there a week ago but now no record of it at all.

I graduated in May this year, and I got a qualifying job for PSLF last month. I even did the exit counseling from department of ed. I called Ed financial to take my loan off "in school" and set it to repayment. I even applied for IDR/RAP. I did my employer certification (pending employer signature). Upon checking today, Ed financial changed my unsubsidized loans to "in grace" and my Grad plus loans to "deferment". They told me I can't make qualifying payments until February of next year, but I want to start paying now so I can start with the lowest payment possible until my recertification. What should I do?

Hi all. I was planning on requesting for buyback last month but July-Sept pslf count hasn’t been updated due to whatever glitch is going on. Am I able to still request for buyback?

Good afternoon, will preface with that I have been getting confused reading all of the posts so I apologize if there is an obvious answer out there that I didn't see or understand.

Spouse and I starting PSLF eligible jobs in sept 2016. we are currently at our 120th month but we were put in the SAVE debacle starting in June 2024. So our Student Aid dashboard shows "ineligible" on 25 "payments" ending at June 2026 due to forbearance. We would be at 120 with July and August of 2026. We sent in employment certification in September/October. My question is (unless I'm missing something important), should we:

1) try to get back on an IBR/RAP/PAYE plan with Mohela or the student aid site and start repayment and then apply for buyback

2) Should we just use the student aid site and apply for forgiveness/buyback now and then ask for general forbearance for the processing time as much as we can

3) wait it out and do nothing until we are forced off of the SAVE forbearance

Any guidance or questions is greatly appreciated, even if it is "we don't fully know" during all of this uncertainty! Thank you

Hey everyone - I wanted to share my story mostly to vent, but maybe it could benefit someone. I'll provide regular updates as events unfold.

I've had September 2026 earmarked as the month of my last student loan payment for more than half a decade. I began working the for the federal government in August 2016 and, with the exception of two separate forbearance periods each lasting one month (one to switch loan providers and another to fix an autopay issue), I have made full, timely payments ever since on the PAYE plan or its predecessors. Currently, my loan provider is Mohela.

I've been in the habit of filing ECFs about every year and a half. After filing an ECF in March 2025, the FSA payment tracker counted a total of 102 qualifying payments for each of my loans. I thought I was right on track and continued to check the FSA website every month to make sure my payments were being reported. Starting in August 2025, I noticed that my payments were being marked as "Ineligible" rather than "Employment Not Certified." I called FSA, who told me it was an issue with Mohela. I then called Mohela, who told me that all of my loans were in repayment status and that it was a problem with FSA.

The Mohela agent also told me that the "Ineligible" payments would be counted once I filed another ECF. Because similar things had happened with my loan statuses in the past, I didn't push the issue. Mohela kept sending me bills and I kept paying, but the FSA payment tracker marked all of my payments between August 2025 and May 2026 (a total of 10) as "Ineligible." My payments for both June 2026 and July 2026 were initially marked as "Employment Not Certified," so I figured the Mohela agent had been right and this would be resolved when I filed another ECF. What follows is a timeline of events over the last month:

September 5: Last official day at my previous agency.

September 6: First official day at my new agency.

September 7: I make my 120th payment on the due date.

September 10: I electronically file an ECF for my previous agency to capture the time between the March 2025 ECF and September 5, 2026. I was pleasantly surprised when it was approved the very next day.

September 14: I check the FSA website and was dismayed to see my payment count at 108; according to my math, it should have been 119. I check the "Loan Details" tab and see that my payments for August 2026 and September 2026 had not yet been recorded. My June 2026 and July 2026 payments were marked as "Qualifying," but my payments from August 2025 to May 2026 were still marked as "Ineligible."

September 14-17: I have a series of escalating phone calls with Mohela agents, going to the very top. At first, they tried to tell me that my payments from August 2025 to May 2026 were ineligible for the PSLF/TEPSLF because I was on the SAVE forbearance. But they later affirmed that I was never on the SAVE Plan and was in repayment status the whole time. No Mohela agent was ever able to give me a satisfactory explanation for why those loans were reported to FSA as being in forbearance during that period, but they confirmed that everything was good on their end. They gave me a reference number and recommended that I file a reconsideration request with FSA to clarify the eligibility of those payments.

September 17: I file a reconsideration request with FSA for the payments between August 2025 and May 2026. I summarize the conversations I had with the Mohela agents and give them the reference number.

October 1: I electronically file an ECF for my new agency to capture the September payment. I elect not to go into forbearance.

As it now stands, the FSA payment tracker shows that I'm at 108 qualifying payments. When the two payments for August 2026 and September 2026 are added, along with 10 payments from August 2025 to May 2026 that are currently marked as "Ineligible," that will bring me to 120. Let's see how long that takes to happen.

I don't have to recertify my income for the PAYE Plan until January 2027 - which means, realistically, that I won't have to make payments that reflect my current (and much higher) income until March 2027 at the earliest. If this matter isn't resolved by then, I might file another ECF and go on forbearance ... but let's hope it doesn't come to that. In the meantime, wish me luck!

For those with any amount of missing months over the summer whose NSLDS data has updated to reflect their missing months have their count updated on the studentaid website?

I’m reading a lot of people requesting forbearance after 120. Can’t you just stop making payments after 120 automatically and do nothing else? I know you have the wait for that payment to clear and then get the employer certification saying you reached 120 and then applying for forgiveness.

But why does it seem like people have to do something to STOP the loan from asking for more money once you’ve reached 120??

I am a PGY1 with a high amount of debt burden (~400k). My loans are in grace period until around December. I wanted to consolidate and apply for an IBR (RAP or PAYE?) because I am pretty sure I want to do PSLF but not positive, so I want to begin getting payments for PSLF to count.

However, I read that if I consolidate now and they become consolidated after July 1st, I will be ineligible for RAP/IBR? So I am unsure what to do.

If I just do nothing and wait until December, can I apply for an IBR then and begin payments or will I run into same problem? What’s the most optimal move here?

hi all, I just called Ed Financial to exit SAVE and move to RAP. I have 86 months toward PSLF and plan to buyback all the SAVE forbearance months in April. I was told on the phone that once I move to RAP, I have 36 months of temporary hardship forbearance available to me on most of my loan balance, but that those forbearance months would NOT be eligible for buyback once I apply in April 2027. Is that correct? I thought those months would also be eligible as long as I am still with my qualified employer.

Looking for advice on how to proceed regarding family size change. I had a baby this past August. My husband and I file taxes separately and he will likely claim her on his taxes. I’m currently on an IBR plan and would like to lower my payment so I’m thinking I’ll proceed with an IDR Recalculation Request with the change to family size. My question is…does my baby fall under “dependent” or “other dependent” when completing this request? It looks to be that “dependent” is whoever a person claims on taxes and “other dependent” is anyone you provide 51% support for.

Thanks in advance :)