Hello everyone, happy holidays! I’ve been reading a lot from this subreddit to figure out a plan to potentially switch from SAVE to IBR due to a recent proposed court settlement. I am almost confident with my anticipated plan with a slight hurdle. Here’s a quick summary of my loan situation:
Federal Direct Loans (undergraduate and graduate loans) totaling almost $61K with little interests accrued. My payments for undergraduate loans began on November 2019 then deferred again until November 2023 with my graduate loans added. I was in a SAVE plan for the most part.
I’m on a SAVE forbearance and had applied PSLF (I understand my loans are not eligible unless I get out of forbearance by switching to IBR). I have not filed my 2025 taxes.
I have a $50K salary with recurring temporary pay bonus (I’d say an estimate of extra $2K by the end of this year).
A slight hurdle is that I received a conflicting information on when to recertify my IDR plan. I have an official document from Nelnet stating I do not need to recertify until March 2027 with the monthly payment due date is November 2028; however according to the Studentaid.gov website, it said that I have to recertify by March 2026.
From my understanding from this community, this November 2028 is a placeholder date because we do not know when the court has reached a decision. While both sources may not have the latest updates, I assume the recertification date from StudentAid website is likely the case since SAVE will eventually be gone. With that being said, I believe it would be best if I switch to IBR after I file my 2025 taxes potentially next month or February. Once I filed it then I can recertify my IDR plan before the March 2026 deadline. Before I proceed with this plan, I’d like to hear some thoughts from some of you! Could any of you share your thoughts/concerns/questions you may have for me?
Potential Switch from SAVE to IBR – Advice Needed
byu/Kryptik_Kai inStudentLoans
Posted by Kryptik_Kai
1 Comment
1. You don’t need to be on a “legal” IDR plan for these SAVE forbearance months to count for PSLF. PSLF is something you retroactively certify after you’ve reached 120 months of qualified employment. Look up what buyback is. Many are going to buyback these forbearance months once they should be at 120 qualified employment months.
2. Since you’re going for PSLF and aren’t even close to 120 qualified employment months, it would be wise to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and STAY IN SAVE FORBEARANCE
3. To prepare for potentially being forced onto a new IDR plan by this administration, I recommend requesting a tax filing extension for your taxes to be due October 2026 instead of April 2026. The goal is to be able to use your lower income, which you likely were making less according to 2024 taxes, correct? You can use that to certify as late as September 2026 if they force us off around then.
4. Any recertification date you’re seeing on federalstudentaid is a GLITCH and you should ignore. Until this settlement is finalized, your recertification date is the 2027 one, and will continue to get pushed back for as long as this SAVE case gets delayed in the courts.
QUESTION: when was your first loan taken out? Before or after July 1, 2014?