I would really love some insight/advice on what to do with my loans while I am intending on serving in the Peace Corps starting in September. For reference I will be graduating from NYU Shanghai this May, and I have about 170,000 in Parent PLUS loans (I know...) under my mother's name that I am hoping to pay back in full. Additionally I have about 27,000 Federal loans in my name—of which I'm less worried about right now.
I've been rigorously researching what my different options may be (double consolidation loophole and getting on the SAVE plan? deferment?). But the unfortunate truth is that the parent PLUS loans are really hard to "get around." As of now, the monthly payments will be way too high for me to cover during my service, and I don't want help from my parents. Throughout my service, the most I will be able to contribute to monthly loan payments is about 300-350. I'm just not sure if there some magical way that I can get my payments down that low—if there is please please enlighten me.
While not going to the Peace Corps is definitely an option, I'm really committed to my decision to serve and so I'm looking for advice that may offer possibilities for repaying those parent PLUS loans during service. I'm majoring in Political Science and have ample international experience. After service, I plan to apply to a Coverdell scholarship (through Peace Corps) in some International Development track. I also plan to use the two years in PC towards PSLF and then transition into possibly a position with USAID. If things all go to plan, my loans would be forgiven 8 years after my service. In this way, I feel that serving will be a smart financial decision in the long run, assuming I'm able to cover the short term costs.

However, I've also heard that I can only qualify for PSLF if my parent borrower is working for the government...is this true? Are there ways to get around this by some form of consolidation??
Sorry for the lengthy rant, but I'm just feeling a bit lost right now and would love to hear other perspectives. If I can clarify anything about my situation, please let me know, and thank you so much in advance to anyone who offers me a bit of their wisdom!!

So my SO and I (whom both have a child together) have federal student loans. My income is significantly higher than SO’s. We currently basically live off of just my income. I will likely have PSLF forgiveness sometime next year. SO’s current monthly payment is $0 dollars due to SO’s low income being under the threshold for the SAVE plan. SO is at least seven years from PSLF forgiveness and there’s a decent chance that may never happen because we are considering getting married, starting a family, and for SO to be a stay at home parent. So we would have to either pay off SO’s sizable loan balance or rely on 25 year IDR forgiveness.

It is our understanding that the SAVE plan replaced the REPAYE plan. And the SAVE plan allows for tax filing married separately, while the REPAYE plan did not. It looks like the SAVE plan has recently been contested in court, but PAYE plan also allows for tax filing married separately.

So therein lies the big question. It looks like IF our goal is to minimize the total repayment amount (assuming that SO becomes a stay at home parent, not qualifying for PSLF forgiveness, and tax filing married separately)… we would be hoping that the SAVE plan stays intact so her payments would essentially be $0 for the 20+ remaining years for IDR forgiveness. However, if the SAVE plan is canceled, then we would have to use the PAYE plan (which increases the total monthly payments due to the income threshold, but payments would still be $0 due to “no income”) to get the same IDR forgiveness.

If the SAVE plan is canceled, we are assuming it will revert back to the REPAYE plan. And we would have to calculate what the pros/cons of that monthly payment (based on our joint income) would be over the 20+ years versus just paying off the loan as quickly as possible.

Are we understanding all of this correctly? Are we missing any pertinent details? Would appreciate all advice and information.

Hi everyone, like the title says, I’m trying to buy a house. We are first time homebuyers. This is the first time my wife and I have ever been in a position to buy, and we are extremely grateful and lucky . My question is this. I am close if not already over the line for PSLF forgiveness with 109 qualifying payments. To be forgiven, I need the IDR adjustment applied to the account for some previous periods not yet counted but would under the adjustment. Will the banks accept anything other than an official discharge letter to show you no longer need to make student loan payments? I’m a little concerned about the underwriters taking my 70K student loan balance into consideration when making an approval decision. It’s a little maddening because I’ve been waiting on MOHELA to do something with this account for months. The months in question are covered under an ECF. I’ve been told to just wait, and there’s nothing else to be done. I feel like MOHELA is keeping us from moving forward with our life.

I am in what I hope to be my last year of payments prior to getting forgiveness through PSLF. For those that have received forgiveness, has anyone had their IDR Renewal Date and Employment Certification Dates close to each other?

My situation is that I will make my final qualifying payment on 12/4/24 and my IDR Renewal Date is on 12/7/24. Should I submit my income information and establish the new payment amount in case there is an issue and I end up needing to pay additional payments or just go into forbearance while they evaluate the forgiveness?

Just some additional information, MOHELA has already verified 111 of my payments are eligible.

My wife has student loans while I do not, along with a large ~100K difference in my income compared to my wife's, so it benefits us massively to file separately since MFJ would at least 3x our payment.

We hope to alternate between MFS and MFJ by delaying tax filing until October. For example

1. This year, 2024, we will file MFS in April for 2023 return
2. Recertify August 2024
3. Delay tax filing for 2025
4. Recertify August 2025 using 2023 return
5. File in 2025 MFJ for 2024 return in October
6. File in 2026 MFS for 2025 return in April .... repeat

First question, has anyone done this before? Second question, there are two options on the studentaid.gov website when recertifying IDR plans, either give them consent to import from IRS or provide documents manually. Does it matter which one we choose here? I don't want to get stuck with payments calculated from the MFJ return.

So I have 4 different loans - 2 prior consolidation loans from undergrad (a subsidized and an unsubsidized) and 2 unsubsidized loans from grad school. I applied in February to consolidate and switch to IDR, and also did my ECFs for ~12 years of public service employment. The ECFs were processed within a couple weeks with credit only given for the years during the Covid pause. I assumed that the waiver would eventually be applied and I just needed to wait for my counts to update. Meanwhile my consolidation was still stuck in processing until 3/22 when I got a notification from credit karma of all places about a change in my mohela account so I logged in and saw it was all zeroed out with the smiley. Of course, I didn’t trust it since I never saw the consolidation go through or my payment counts update. Studentaid.gov updated a few days later to show “paid in full by consolidation” on all the unsubsidized loans and just “paid in full” on the subsidized one. My payment counts on all still say 42. No new balance has appeared on mohela. I still have a zero balance there and on studentaid.gov. I’m assuming this is all just the consolidation going through very slowly but is possible one loan was forgiven while the others weren’t yet?

Saw a YouTube short where Dave Ramsey was basically saying you have less than a 5% chance of being approved for PSLF even if you make it to the end. Is there any evidence to back up what he’s saying? Surely most people don’t get approved because of mistakes along the way? I just started my journey last fall and I’m all set up on Mohela but seeing videos like that is concerning, but I’ve spent hours researching and I feel like there’s no credibility to what he said.

The FSA website directs me to Mohela customer support to get info on PSLF. I've never used Mohela in my life - should I make an account with them to begin the PSLF process?

Am I able to refinance my loans into a PSFL eligible loan?

How to know my pslf loan was forgiven? Nelnet and Mohela are both showing 0 balance and a payment made yesterday of my entire balance and no pending payments. It looks like my loans were forgiven??!!! How can I know for certain?

Just logged on and saw it said 0 eligible payments made

I know this is a small chance but if I apply for IDR now can they go back and count my previous 120 payments as eligible?

If not I probably won’t be working for a PSLF eligible employer for 10 more years so I don’t want to apply for IDR have my payments go up for nothing.

Hi, I have 100K in my own student debt, but it's not eligible for PSLF because I consolidated it a long time ago to a private loan. My daughter is a freshman at a state school and my son will enter college in 3 years. I have been paying for my daughter's school up to this point, which has been difficult, and have not taken loans for her. I have been working at a PSLF-eligible place for over 10 years and plan to continue for at least 20 years. Is there an advantage to me taking parent plus loans and trying to get them forgiven later? I have a coworker whose debt was forgiven along with parent plus loans she had taken for her kids, but she had a government loan for herself that she had been paying on for over 10 years. I think there may be a way for me to take parent plus loans and then consolidate them and stretch them out to 25 or 30 years while paying on them for 10 years, but I'm not sure that is possible or would work. Appreciate any advice you can give.

Hit the 120+ payments back in Feb. waiting patiently for those magical words (or smiley face). Currently on admin forbearance while they sort it out.

What’s the first place I will see forgiveness? Should I be checking the Mohela website? StudentAid.gov? Just wait for an email from them?

Thanks all.

The hallowed silvery green check showed up this afternoon, capping off a 2.5 year process from first application to final refund. Super big thanks to the mods and contributors on here, we definitely would have given up without this community. You're the best!

Has anyone had this happen or am I misunderstanding? I thought it was clear that on save we weren’t accruing interest but Mohela has added interest to my balance??

Wife had student loan payment taken debited out from bank account even though her recertification date got pushed a year to February 2025. On MOHELA's website it still clearly states that her date is now Feb '25, but they were able to take out $2,000 from her checking account because she had auto-pay set up to save 0.25% on interest.

This is crazy. We discontinued the autopay now, but do we ever have any hope of getting that $2k credited back? Hopefully we won't have to spend hours on the phone with MOHELA, but of course now it's Friday and Monday is is Easter Monday.

Has this happened to anyone else? $0 payments all of a sudden became $2k even though we didn't recertify.

​

Is this a common issue? I completed PSLF special waiver to get peace corps service forebearance counted as eligible payments. And did consolidation. I submitted in Aug 2022. It shows the first and last month as eligible payments but nothing in between (two years of payments missing apart from first and last month). I’ve called Mohela about 4 times and receive varying answers. most recent answer is they are waiting on payments to be counted and adjustment to be done by the Dept of Education. Does that sound right? Is anyone else in this boat? Frustrating as I’m nearing forgiveness but need these 2 years of loans to be counted. Thanks in advance for your help!

My PSLF tracker says I have 14 payments left to go out of 120. I have 5 months of payments that I'm eligible for but haven't certified yet, and now Mohela has put me on an administrative forbearance until 4/29. Does that mean my loan may be forgiven sooner? I thought I heard about Biden wiping out some more student loan debt recently.

Hello, I am in need of some assistance. Thought I would ask here before I call or reapply. I have been in PSLF for a couple of years, and I just consolidated my graduate loans before the deadline. When I did so, I applied for SAVE plan at that time. I just received my paperwork that the consolidation went through, and my payments are over $1800 on the level plan due at the end of April. I am very confused as I applied for SAVE, and my payments should be approximately $300. Any advice? Should I just re-apply, which connects me to student aid.gov (which is where I applied to begin with) or call Mohela? Thank you!

not happening right now, but i am planning to apply PSLF in the future and run into a question, My loan will be about 300k after graduation, and after graduation I will probably working for a PSLF quality employer, i know the payment is depended on the most recent tax return, but if I do not have any income the year before working for the quality employer, how much do I need to pay for the PSLF monthly payment?

I’m trying to take advantage of the PSLF forgiveness review for my FFELP loans from undergrad and my much larger medical school debt by doing a direct consolidation loan and having the PSLF review that’s available for FFELP loans on consolidation Unfortunately I didn’t know until about a week ago that this was an option. I filed my consolidation paperwork but it seems like I have to wait for the loan to be consolidated to apply for PSLF. Is this correct or can I go ahead and start working on the PSLF? Also does the PSLF have to be submitted by April 30 or does it have to be approved by then? I’m worried about getting all the employment verifications in on time….

Hello, I'm hoping to get some advice on my current situation. I'm currently in graduate school and will have about 80k in federal student loans when I officially graduate in 2026. Some of these loans are from undergrad but mainly from the current graduate program I'm in. When I graduate I'm going to have my master's degree in speech pathology and salaries can vary! The lowest I've seen for public school is starting at 57k for a 10-month contract but working in hospitals can pay over 80k as well, I also plan to apply for the PSLF program. I have just been very stressed lately thinking about my loans and feeling really guilty about them. I feel extremely embarrassed by them but didn't really have any other option and I love the career I chose. Do you think this is a good plan? I'm currently enrolled in the SAVE plan so I'd be paying 10% of my income each month I believe which I feel I'd be able to afford. I already have a savings account with over 6k in for student loan payments once I graduate as my loans are on pause. I also have over 11k in an emergency savings account. I also currently work while in graduate school so I can save to put aside money into my savings account. Does anyone have a similar experience? Or has anyone actually went through PSLF? What should I do in this situation? Should I be freaking out ..... I feel lost :(

Looking for advice.

My undergrad loans transferred to MOHELA within the last year from MyFedLoan. The loans are about 10 years old, all public, and all qualify for PSLF. I'm a Federal employee and plan on riding this out to 120 payments. I should have about ~90 qualifying payments currently.

The loan payment history MOHELA currently has is not accurate (missing payments, incorrect employment timeline) dating back years. I have a few questions:

1. Will a new employment certification form sort all of this out?

2. MOHELA currently has my monthly payment at 0$. Why would I certify now as opposed to wait until I have 120 qualifying months? I understand that my interest is accruing, but won't the payments retroactively count once I cross that 120 threshold?

​

Thanks for any perspective you can offer.

I am PSLF, not her, but a story none the less. Daughter worked hard to pay off all 27K of her student loans in 6 months- at the very last payment....

She was transferred over to the new Mohela platform and apparently the data was delayed and a payment she made went to a loan that was paid off, but was not recorded as paid off when she made it. So she has an overpayment (credit)on loan 2 in the amount of her very last loan 1. She called asking why the overpayment has not yet been applied to her last loan as they said it would, when she called last week. Today they said it would take 57 business days and she needed to be paying payments on a NET ZERO balance until they got around to crediting her account correctly. So they are making her pay more money they are not entitled to, so she avoids being reported as delinquent/missed payments in the future on a net zero balance. Bets they also charge her interest, but keep any interest they made on her overpayment? I had her file a complaint with CFPB.

Hello all,
I am finishing up my fourth year of medical school and will begin working at the end of June. My job will qualify for PSLF and I plan to pursue the PSLF path. I also plan to apply for the new SAVE IDR program. My question is, should I apply for the SAVE program first or wait until I've consolidated my loans for PSLF? My loans are all unconsolidated and under a different loan servicer than MOHELA

Trying to get a better sense of numbers here. Thanks in advance.

I was a resident physician when the pandemic hit, and initially had a IDR that reflected my salary as a trainee.

Now, as an attending physician, my salary has increased. However, my monthly payment is scheduled to stay the same (about $80/month) for another year, and recent payments look to have counted toward my 120.

My loans are significant (almost half a million) and I'm concerned that if they aren't forgiven in 5-6 years, my total amount to be paid over time will be even more significant if I don't start paying more per month, sooner.

My budget will be tight if I start making salary-appropriate payments now (>$1000/month) but I can do it.

Am I crazy for wanting to hedge a relatively small amount of money now for a huge potential savings in interest later if my loans aren't forgiven?

Hello Friends. One of my loans was forgiven in the march wave. On the front page of the Mohela website, it says that the forgiveness is effective 12/31/23. The letter from Mohela with the loan forgiveness information is dated march 5th. When I download my aid data on FSA, there is a “paid in full“ loan status with an effective date of 12/31/23 and then there is a field for “loan cancel date” and “loan cancel amount” that is blank.

My question: how in the world do I figure out the exact official date of my forgiveness that would correspond with “must be employed with a qualifying employer at the time of forgiveness”? I know this is no longer the rule but I worry that future lawsuits will attempt to reverse this rule change. Will "Loan cancel date" eventually populate?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Has anyone seen December change to eligible/qualifying? The alert on my account says it will be updated in 30 days and we're almost at the 30 day mark with no movement.

Aaaand I was on hold for 40 minutes before hearing a human, who got all my info, and told me she was going to transfer me to a "more knowledgeable" representative. That was 20 minutes ago.

Apparently, January 2024 was also admin forbearance, but they auto-debited my account in full. I'm so tired.

Can someone let me know if Feb or March are also admin forbearance? How do we know when it's over? I don't even have a letter about January.

Thanks.