Many borrowers who were working full-time for PSLF-eligible employers were placed into the SAVE litigation forbearance through no choice of their own. During that time, they continued serving their communities—but those months may not count toward PSLF.
This isn’t about asking for special treatment. It’s about recognizing qualifying public service that was already completed.
If you are a physician, nurse, teacher, first responder, or any public servant affected by this, consider contacting your U.S. Senators and Representative and asking for:
✅ Automatic PSLF credit for SAVE litigation forbearance months for borrowers who were working for qualifying employers
✅ A fair solution for borrowers who followed federal guidance and were impacted by a policy/legal dispute outside their control
Your story matters. Public servants should not lose progress toward loan forgiveness for service they already provided.
PSLF borrowers: we need your voices.
byu/Same-Durian683 inStudentLoans
Posted by Same-Durian683
2 Comments
If people made the decision to not transition off of SAVE, then they have the option for buyback once they reach 120 months of certified employment.
It was always very strange to me the number of people working in PSLF eligible employment during that time who chose to stay on forbearance.
I know there are unique situations where it was a better short-term solution. Or those who wouldn’t or couldn’t use the IRS linking so they got stuck in the manual application backlog. But I imagine that’s a small portion of the overall group who stayed in forbearance.
Perhaps much of it was just confusion, though.
Never going to happen. People were notified at the time that they would not be getting PSLF credit, and they were urged to move to another plan. That was the “federal guidance” you are conveniently now ignoring.
Anyone who chose not to move off SAVE, in the hope that SAVE would be saved, and that they would retroactively get what you are now “asking for,” are in this position due solely to their own actions. They will have PSLF buy back, if it still exists when they hit 120 months of qualifying employment, or they will lose credit for that time.
They made a choice. No one is going to go back and fix this for them now.
Because it is, literally “asking for special treatment.” It is asking for payment credit for months were there were no payments made, due to an administrative forbearance.
Public servants might have provided public service, but they made no loan payments. That’s why they should, indeed, “lose progress toward loan forgiveness” for those months that they allowed themselves to remain in an administrative forbearance, when they were warned of the consequences of doing so. Good luck with this.