Student Loan Live Q&A with Robert: PSLF Trackers, SAVE Forbearance, and Navigating RAP vs. IBR

Have you heard any timeline to fix the PSLF counter?

So if you guys aren't aware, the PSLF counter is just totally jacked up after July 1st, and Tysha, they've said 30 to 60 days now for 30 days. So I'm hopeful that in the next 30 to 60 days it will be resolved.

At the end of the day, though, all the data is still being processed and accepted. It's just that it's not getting uploaded into the PSLF counter.

So, I know it's very frustrating, especially if you're very close to your 120 mark, but because the counter isn't working doesn't mean you should do anything different for your actual PSLF eligibility.

For MOHELA PSLF, is there a limit on how early to pay if my payment is due 11/3 and I want to pay on 10/23?

No, you can always pay before your deadline's due. It's the smart thing to do if you're not set up for autopay. So V, our recommendation is if you do autopay through your loan servicer, you just set it for your due date and set and forget.

If you are sending money from your bank on bill pay, you're doing it right. You want to be paying about 7 to 10 days early, because if you set that payment for 10/23, it still might not process until 10/30, right?

So you want to have that buffer built in because if it's not on time, it doesn't count for PSLF.

My autopay is on Saturday this month, should I be worried about it being late?

If your autopay is set up through your loan servicer, no. If it's set up through your bank as bill pay to push to your loan servicer, yes. You should not do that. But if it's just what you're set up for with your loan servicer, no worries.

Once I apply for IBR after I made one payment on ICR, will a new due date be given?

Yeah, it'll be a new due date once they process that application for you.

My monthly payment under RAP is cheaper by $50 than the standard plan, but under RAP, I'd finish a year early. Why?

Luke, you're probably getting some type of benefit in there for, you know, the interest subsidy or principal reduction subsidy without seeing all the math, like, that's cool. Also, remember, your standard plan might not be your standard 10-year plan if you consolidate in history.

I haven't even applied to a new plan. My loan says zero dollar payment and forbearance until 10/31/2028. What should I do?

So Zephyr, remember that's always been a placeholder. You will get a notification from your loan servicer with a 90-day deadline, and you need to choose a new plan by your 90-day deadline.

With that being said, you don't have to go early, but now is the time that you should be running your options so that you know what to expect, so you don't get caught off guard.

And depending on what your goals are, like if you're going for Public Service Loan Forgiveness or anything like that, being in forbearance is hurting you probably more than it's helping you.

When is it not ideal to consolidate?

Never. Never ideal to consolidate. The only people that should consolidate are those that are in default, and even then, consolidation is the second-best option. Rehabilitation is the first-best option.

Nobody else needs to consolidate, Kies Kies. It actually might hurt you more than any kind of benefit you'll ever get, because there's no benefit. It only hurts. It only hurts.

For federal student loans, what is the best way for an RN to get forgiveness—only PSLF?

PSLF is the best in terms of like you actually work for 10 years and you get your loans forgiven. There's always other things, like time-based loan forgiveness. ICR and IBR both have time-based loan forgiveness.

You have death and disability... Oh, your daughter is the RN! Okay, good. Well, your daughter can also just have Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Definitely the best program for loan forgiveness.

Should I consolidate my post-2009 federal Direct loans and HPSL loans to get into RAP?

Ah, no. Uh, so your federal loans, your, I don't know what that HP, your health profession, I don't know what HPSL is, but your federal student loans, if you've borrowed since 2009, are Direct student loans and you don't need to consolidate that.

Whatever that HPSL is, isn't eligible for RAP or anything else anyways, it's whatever you borrowed with that thing. Um, your federal Direct loans, if you borrowed after 2009, they're eligible for RAP. You do treat them both differently.

You may need to do the paper application, but you don't need to consolidate. Why you don't want to consolidate: number one is any history you have on the loan gets reset for time-based loan forgiveness.

Anything that you're getting for Public Service Loan Forgiveness gets reset to a weighted average. You lose repayment plan options. You will not have access to the legacy plans. You will only have access to RAP and tiered standards.

And so you're really just making things worse for yourself with no benefit. Zero benefit. And Kies Kies, if you saw our video yesterday, the paper application's online if for some reason they're not letting you process it on the website.

Sometimes that happens if you have two different loan servicers or two different loan types. The system gets angry and doesn't let you move forward, so use the paper application.

Does manual certification count towards IBR if the payment becomes zero?

Um, I'm not totally tracking your language, but if you have a zero dollar IBR payment, that counts for time-based loan forgiveness. I don't know what you mean by manual certification, like you're doing it off-cycle because you became unemployed or something? That doesn't matter. Everything's manual.

If I consolidated my loans last year, can I still do the buyback on loans that were consolidated?

You can't buy back time before the consolidation, a_lad. I'm sorry that you consolidated. I don't know what the story was on that one.

Why is RAP not always the lowest payment?

Because it's a formula, if you have a small loan balance and good income, you might benefit the most on the standard plan. You also have IBR if you're a legacy borrower, and it's calculated differently than the RAP plan is.

So generally, what we've seen running a lot of scenarios is that RAP is the best in like the middle income brackets. IBR wins usually below 30k or so, simply because IBR gets you to zero dollars a month where RAP is at $10 a month.

RAP starts winning in the middle: 30 to 80 to 100k, and then IBR takes over again. But Trace, neither of them might be the best if you make really good money and your loan balance is only like $10, 12, $15,000.

Like, you're just going to pay off the loan, and so the standard plan just is the cheapest plan, too. Because remember, the standard plans aren't calculated based on your income, they're calculated based on your loan balance and your interest rate.

How does PSLF buyback work?

Super common question, Hybridsouls. So in simple terms, you can buy back the months of payments that you were wanting to make, but you were not allowed to because of a required forbearance or deferment. The most common one that people are trying to buy back is the SAVE forbearance.

And so the requirements to buy back this time are that you already get to 120 months of certified employment. So you have to have already done the work, you just couldn't make the payments.

With that being said, you apply and you go into a two-year wait queue. And you wait out two years, and then the Department of Education will manually calculate what your payments should have been under IBR or Pay As You Earn during the months that you're trying to buy back.

And if you're trying to buy back more than a year, you're going to have to submit your tax returns and show what you made, and they will manually calculate it out. So then you get a lump sum when they add up all the months.

So let's say it's two years because you're trying to buy back SAVE, and we'll just keep it round numbers. You're trying to buy back 2024, 2025, and 2026 months. You're going to have to send three years of tax returns. They're going to look at your income.

They're going to say, "This is what your IBR payment would have been at this time. This is what your IBR payment would have been in 2025. This is what your IBR payment would have been in 2026." You add it all up, and then you have 90 days to pay that lump sum, or they don't count it and you've got to just keep working.A few reasons why I'm not a huge buyback fan: number one is if you start realizing the math is no longer in your favor because if you are trying to buy back anything in 2026, it uses your 2026 tax return which you're going to file here in January, February, March...but if you enroll in IBR right now, it's going to use your 2025 income... Submit the application, keep working, and maybe every month that you work offsets your buyback backwards.

Isn't buyback based on your tax return that's already in the system?

Doesn't matter. Your 2024 months are based on your 2024, what do you call it, tax return. Your 2025 months are based on your 2025 tax return. But you know what you're enrolling in IBR right now if you were to sign up for IBR today in September?

You're signing up using your 2025 tax return. And if you're trying to buy back 2026 months, you're going to have to buy them back at your 2026 rate, which isn't even in the system yet.And so your 2026 income is likely going to be more than your 2024, and you're going to lose. I've already seen multiple people lose and decide to not do it.

Have you talked about parent PLUS loans? It seems they are not eligible for anything.

Melissa, give us your scenario, but parent PLUS loans aren't eligible for anything. Congress designed them that way because you as the parent PLUS loan borrower did not benefit from the education that you paid for, and you were making a decision based on the middle of your career and established 20 years of earnings.

And so they intentionally designed parent PLUS loans to not have access to most of these things because in Congress's own words, I'm paraphrasing, like that's like a backdoor hack, like you're not getting this education... you have access to the standard repayment plans only if you are not an old borrower.

If we submitted an application to switch from IBR to SAVE, and the Department of Education took two months to process, do those months count?

MZ, I don't know what you mean by "do they count for what." For PSLF? If you actually were in a processing forbearance, processing forbearances count for PSLF.

But generally, leaving the SAVE plan is not considered a processing forbearance because they don't move you from a general forbearance to a processing forbearance out, because you were already in a forbearance, you're not getting a new kind of forbearance as a result.

Will we be able to get time spent in the SAVE forbearance to go to our IDR forgiveness?

No, as of today, not at all, and even the legislation that's out there is only for PSLF, not IBR. So no.

I have completed 300 required payments and switched to IBR, what's the timeline for forgiveness?

What's the timeline for forgiveness for IBR? They're running IBR forgiveness cycles in two-month intervals, and I don't know where you landed in the two-month interval, but most people should plan on it taking about four months as a result of it.

So once you pass it, then they process it, and then it's a whole thing. So plan on like four to six months or so after you've crossed it for it to be processed and handled.

I have 91 payments, but 51 did not count towards my student loan forgiveness. Why?

I don't know if there's a follow-up comment there. We'd like to know why, what plan. I'm venturing PSLF, I'm venturing SAVE forbearance or wrong repayment plan... Yeah, Shaka, that's your job then, not the government's fault. You need to get your employer to certify that you were full-time.

If I have 10 years of repayment under a previous IBR program, should I do RAP or extended standard?

Dragon, it really depends again on your goals. If your goal is repayment, I mean both of them work. You can hedge your bet with RAP, but if you're going to start making extra payments to pay it off, right, you're not going to get the interest subsidy and the principal reduction subsidy.

You know, the goal is to math it out. Do I go for loan forgiveness? And if I was going for loan forgiveness, I'd probably stick with IBR because it's 20 or 25 years instead of RAP's 30.If you are trying to just repay these loans now because you're in a different income situation and like you're not going to get any forgiveness, then figure out which one's the most optimal to repay. I'm always a fan of the standard or extended standard for repayment. They're the mathematically best ones.

I am currently unemployed and in SAVE forbearance, what should I do?

Szuszka, this is the most weird advice I give, but being unemployed is absolutely the best time, and I wish you would have moved out of SAVE last year because you would have really nailed this hack.

But anyways, Szuszka, use your unemployment to apply for IBR. You could have a low or zero dollar payment by doing so, and that counts for forgiveness, unlike being in SAVE that doesn't count for diddly-squat...You can literally go do it right now, and go get on IBR and out of this mess, but use your no income to do it.

If my IBR/PSLF post-SAVE starts 11/3, will October count as processing forbearance?

No, if you're coming out of SAVE, like I said, you don't generally move into a processing forbearance; you're in the SAVE forbearance until it literally ends. You don't get credit for that. They don't change forbearance statuses for you.

Where a processing forbearance comes into play is if you were in a repayment plan, go into forbearance, and then into a new repayment plan.

I just reached 120 months of working at a nonprofit, shall I request the buyback for the SAVE months?

Laser, again, put the request in, but also keep working. I don't know if you're going to see much of a mathematical benefit from buyback, especially if we are now just hitting your 120 mark and you're trying to buy back 2024, 2025, 2026.

Um, I don't know if you're in IBR right now or Pay As You Earn or RAP, but you should be, and you just keep working and you race the two to see which one gets it done first.

How do I figure out the married filing separately vs. jointly to get a $0 payment?

TT Karma, just realize though, a few things. One, filing separately raises your tax bill. So, not to say that you're not doing it right, but a lot of these tax credits are based on you filing married filing jointly, and you could be losing a lot of money...

It's not your refund, TT Karma. A lot of people mix up tax refunds versus what you pay in taxes. I don't care what your refund is, that's just you giving the government more in the year. You got to figure out your total tax bill.Run the numbers on married filing jointly and married filing separately and see the tax due... then you take your tax bill and you take your numbers, and you go over to our student loan calculator and you put them in and you see the difference in your student loan payments, and then you add it up.If you save more than you pay, you win. If you save less than you pay more in taxes, you lose, and that's the calculation you need to run.

Where can I find the guide on how buyback is calculated?

Darien Patterson, you can Google how buyback is calculated, just Google it, it'll literally probably be your first result on The College Investor's website. And I break down the math and I show you the scenarios: under 12 months, how it's calculated. I even have a picture of what they ask for... it's in the article.

Have you heard of when the July PSLF tracker update will happen?

It is 30 to 60 days, and they've been saying that for 30 to 60 days. Actually, they've only been saying it for about a month, but probably another 30 to 60 days.

Remember Luke, everything is still processing as normal. You've got to submit your payments on time and whatnot, and they'll get the tracker updated.We lived for 15 years in the PSLF with no tracker. We can live for three more months with no tracker... just keep doing your thing.

I filed a complaint with the ombudsman about a week ago, how long do they take to resolve? Is the ombudsman independent or part of the Department of Education?

Two to three months probably, depending on what it is... The ombudsman is a part of the Department of Education, but you have to realize that they are generally actually very helpful individuals.

I've actually met the ombudsman a few times, super knowledgeable and super savvy on this stuff. Blizzard, you have to realize that for the most part, you only deal with loan servicers...When you actually get to non-political Department of Education workers, super knowledgeable, and most of them really know their stuff...Problem is, there's not very many of them because most of the work is outsourced to loan servicers and business processing organizations and whatnot.

Would I be responsible for the taxes on the amount forgiven? Is REPAYE coming back?

Yes, you would be responsible. REPAYE is probably not coming back, too, Dragon. Don't hold your hope on that one... even if the judge were to rule today, the Department of Education is going to just tell them it's not logistically possible to get it live again because they're already going to end enrollment on July 1st. Like it's not going to happen.

How would I know if I have to make 20 or 25 years of payments under IBR to receive forgiveness?

Under IBR, which is what I'm assuming you're talking about, new borrowers, these are borrowers that never borrowed a student loan before June of 20, or July of 2014, you're 20 years. If your first student loan ever in history, even if you paid it off, was before June of 2014, it's 25 years on IBR.

If your IBR payment is too high, what do you do?

Well one, make sure it's right. Like manually do the math on a piece of paper, or go run our student loan calculator. Number two, compare it to RAP, right? Go see what your other options are, because RAP could be cheaper for you.

And then number three is we have to look at the budget, because between RAP and IBR, you're always less than 10% of your pay. Most people are 3 to 7%.You're only at 10% if you're making $100,000 or more a year. So we got to figure out what else is going on there, what's going on with the other 90, 95% of your money.

I work for a nonprofit, so I don't make a ton of money. What should I enroll in?

User, you should enroll in IBR or RAP, and you should make sure you're certifying your employment for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

To get out of SAVE and enroll, what plan should I pick?

IBR or RAP. Run the calculators. Those are the two that are PSLF eligible moving forward. Run the calculators, pick the lowest.

If they put you into the standard plan, can you change it to IBR after?

So if you default into the standard plan, you can. You need to make a payment, you need to do at least one billing cycle in standard before you roll in to change repayment plans again.

Honestly, Baby, don't let them do that. Like literally guys, have we learned nothing? We're Americans. We do not let the government make choices for our finances for us. We should be making our own choices so that we have that control.

I'm at 120 payments, why is PSLF taking so long to process?

Luke, I haven't really seen a ton of issues except in the last three months, I'm not going to say that they don't exist, with normal PSLF forgiveness...

but even in the normal time of people hitting their 120, it still takes six to eight weeks once it's been done to process. We might see that add another 30 or 60 days, but normal PSLF has been processing for the last two years pretty normally. Buyback, whole other story. Normal PSLF, pretty normal.

I've been ignoring my student loans, I'm making less than 30k a year. What should I do?

Nikki, super counterintuitive, but not making a lot of money is the best time to actually take action on your student loans.

I don't know your whole status, I don't know if you're married with kids or whatnot, but I highly encourage you to go run the student loan calculator, go look at IBR or RAP. You might have a zero dollar or a very, very, very low student loan payment.And so then you can start making progress towards loan forgiveness. Maybe repayment's not in your future, maybe loan forgiveness is in your future.But being in forbearance or ignoring your loans or potentially being in default, it's not going to help you. Being in IBR or RAP will start making that process, even if it's a zero dollar payment, it counts.

My IBR and standard payments are almost the same. Which should I pick?

Pick IBR, not even a question. Brady, here's the thing: IBR caps at your standard plan amount, and I don't know what your future holds, but if you're going for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, time-based loan forgiveness, you want to be in IBR.

If you end up continuing to make good money and your income increases, IBR caps at standard, and you can just treat it like standard, snowball the debt, and be done with it.

How long does it take for the parent PLUS loan to be assigned a servicer?

Usually within 30 days of the first disbursement... Fake Name, you can also log in to studentaid.gov, click your loan details, drop the little box down, and it should tell you who your loan servicer is if it's not already connected to you.

I just started working as a teacher. What are the key dos and don'ts to apply for student loan forgiveness?

Public Service Loan Forgiveness is the best plan for teachers, generally. With that being said, you need to enroll in the correct repayment plan: IBR or RAP, and always do whichever is lowest.

You're not trying to make extra payments on your student loans, you're trying to maximize your loan forgiveness. So IBR or RAP. Part two is you need to certify your employment every single year...Part three, Kittie, is you can also hack your student loan payment by saving for yourself... Maximize your 403(b) to the full extent possible.The cool thing about investing in your 403(b) is you're saving for yourself in your own retirement, but at the same time, you're lowering your taxable income, which lowers your student loan payment, which in turn maximizes your forgiveness.

Should I be concerned about my loans if I'm currently in school?

Anon, you don't have to deal with your student loans if you're enrolled at least half-time. Your loans should be in-school deferment. But when you're finishing school, you have your grace period, and you should be making a good plan for what repayment looks like for you.

What about Teacher Loan Forgiveness?

It's five years, consecutive. Part two, though, is it's only $5,000 for a non-highly qualified teacher and $17,000 for a highly qualified teacher, and there's very specific designations for a highly qualified teacher, like special ed, things like that.

So for 90-plus percent of teachers, it doesn't make sense to do Teacher Loan Forgiveness. Public Service Loan Forgiveness is where it's at, because you can't double-dip the time, too.So if you do Teacher Loan Forgiveness first, you literally just delayed yourself five years.

If a teacher taught for over 10 years and had to medically retire, can you still qualify for forgiveness?

Well in that 10-year period of time, if you did all the steps that you were supposed to: eligible repayment plan, eligible loan type, you can still back-certify your employment, you could qualify.

I also don't know today if you are totally and permanently disabled, but if you are totally and permanently disabled, that also qualifies for loan forgiveness.Totally and permanently disabled has specific definitions if you are going through the Social Security Administration, it is a five-year plus review period of time.

Should I consolidate my bachelor degree loans?

Mostly Sheila, we do not advocate anyone consolidate their student loans. It is a horrible, horrible thing to do after July 1st, because the rules have changed.

So all the downsides: number one, you lose any prior payment history you might have had on those bachelor degree loans. Time-based loan forgiveness fully resets, Public Service Loan Forgiveness partially resets, it's a weighted average.Part two is you block yourself from accessing the legacy student loan repayment plans. Your new options will only be IBR or RAP and tiered standard, and so that is no bueno as well.So honestly, there's just no benefits, only downsides. You don't need to do it, just enroll in a repayment plan, guys.

If you were in IBR then entered SAVE and now you go to RAP, will you lose your IBR forgiveness history?

No, it carries forward with you.

Can I file taxes separately from my spouse next year for a lower payment?

Yes you can. Whether you should is, mm, 50/50... Married filing separately always costs you more in taxes, and it could cost you significantly more in taxes, literally tens of thousands of dollars more in taxes...

Run the taxes, see how much more you're paying on married filing separately, and then go run the student loan calculators and see how much you save.If you save more than you pay, you win. If you save less than what you pay more in taxes, you lose, and that's the calculation you need to run.

Do payments reduce on income-driven repayment plans if you have dependents? Can a married couple still claim dependents separately, or will only one be allowed to?

Mostly Sheila, your payments do reduce on income-driven repayment plans if you have dependents... So you put them on one person's tax return, you can't double-dip your dependents. And for RAP specifically, Mostly Sheila, to get the dependent deduction on RAP, it has to be on your specific return, okay?

Can I claim my dog as a dependent?

Annette, you cannot claim your dog as a dependent. I am very sorry. Annette, if I really want to ruffle people's feathers, you could also claim your unborn children that you're going to have for IBR specifically, but not the dog.

Is a parent PLUS loan a good option for 16k?

Malachi, I hate parent PLUS loans. Number one is the order of operations for borrowing for school is the child takes their federal student loan first, and then you supplement...

My second thought is why I hate parent PLUS loans because they're the parent's loans, the child has no responsibility to them, and parent PLUS loans destroy families. Everybody hates each other...Number three is that the rules for parent PLUS loans have changed after July 1st. Parent PLUS loans have no access to loan forgiveness programs, they're only repaid under the standard plan, and the interest rate's 9% or more.If you really have to supplement and you're going to ignore all advice about going to a cheaper school, I highly recommend you look at just co-signing a private student loan, assuming you can get a better interest rate than that 9%.

Can the new administration bring back a program like the SAVE plan?

Cat, every president since George Bush has created something with student loans... So will it happen? Probably. Some variation is going to change.

When will it happen, though, I think is the more pressing thing for you, Cat. So the earliest any type of reform like that could logistically go into effect would be 2030, right?...SAVE was not approved by Congress, so that's the problem. So all the plans that are dying were done by executive order or rule-making...

Can you talk about the process for co-signer release on private student loans?

Yeah, so it's mythical. I've seen it happen, it's just incredibly rare. So every single private lender these days advertises co-signer releases, and they all have various rules...

The CFPB did a study, and they found that 90 to 99% of co-signer releases never happen. What the lenders really want you to do is refinance the loan into your own name.And so look, co-signer release is a thing, I've seen it happen, but it's not something that you should bank on in any material sense of the word.

Can I appeal on my past two years of payments that they won't accept because of the SAVE plan?

Savannah, so you didn't need to make payments while in forbearance. If you did, they just go to your loan's principal, and they don't count for anything like PSLF or time-based loan forgiveness. But if you've been making payments, it hopefully was paying down your loan during this period of time. So I don't quite know what you want to count, it's not like the money disappeared, it's just it went to your loan.

I applied for a new plan after I got my 90-day notice, when should I expect to start paying?

The average processing time we're seeing is two to three weeks... But whenever your application is done being processed, your payment is due about 28 days later.

Do you think student loans will be decreased after IBR in the future?

What do you mean decreased? IBR, Jess Kane, is based on your income as an individual. So if your income goes up, your payment goes up. If your income goes down, your payment goes down. I'm not tracking you exactly.

Any chance they'll implement a forbearance again?

Cat, no, but I mean all the data says that the SAVE forbearance is probably the most detrimental thing that's happened to student loan borrowers...

the average SAVE borrower has seen their loan balance... increase by $3,500. These forbearances, you know, people are just, they're not taking advantage of them...99.9% of people didn't, and they are literally going to end up paying more on their student loans as a result of it.

Is Sallie Mae good?

Malachi, we have a list of lenders, go click them in the bio. Honestly, the name of the lender doesn't matter. They're lenders, man, like they don't give a crap about you and they're going to charge you the most they can charge you.

So you need to get three to five quotes and go see who's offering you the lowest interest rates on your loans based on your credit and your income.They're all lenders, man. It's like banks, like nobody gives a lender a good review, nobody gives a bank a good review. They are not your friends, they are not your allies. Like you need to just get fleeced as little as possible.

How do I make sure that MOHELA is calculating my PSLF correctly? I'm at 85 out of 120 payments.

Evelyn, like everything else with your money, you need to keep records. So we always recommend that you save a copy of all your employment certifications, and that you also save a copy of your student loan statements, so that you can correlate the two together.

If you've missed or haven't saved them, you can find a lot of them in your submitted document portal, but only you know if 85 out of 120 is correct based on what you've submitted, because you have the paperwork of all of your qualifying history...Trust, but verify, guys.

Aggressively pay student loans below 5% or invest?

Bobert, I am a big fan of both. It really depends on where you're at and what your goals are. I would never pay extra on my student loans if I wasn't taking advantage of all my free money opportunities first: 401(k), HSA, you know, anything like that where you're getting an employer match, definitely make sure you're not leaving free money on the table.

You're straight taking a pay cut by not doing it. Then, I would also probably take advantage of things that I can't get back. I mean things like an IRA, right?... So I would try to do that first before you go after your student loans...Honestly, I've never met anyone that regretted paying off their student loans, but at the same time, like I'd rather see you build wealth so that by the time you're in your 30s, not only are you on a path to being debt-free, but you got a nice nest egg going for yourself.

Is it possible that RAP will be canceled in the future and I would reset if I start IBR then?

So Natalie, twofold: is it possible that RAP is canceled in the future? Of course! But it's also important to realize the mechanism that it would be canceled by and how it would impact you.

So RAP is now a congressionally approved repayment plan, just like IBR. There's only three of them now: there's the standard plans and tiered standard, there's IBR, and there's RAP. Those are the only codified by Congress in the statute repayment plans.So if they did un-statute it and cancel it, they can't remove it for the existing borrowers. It will exist, they'll do exactly what they did when RAP started...

Would you recommend now to get financial aid like FAFSA for a master's degree student?

So Drianna, of course, if you're going for your master's degree, it's a no-brainer to fill out the FAFSA to see if you qualify for anything. I don't know what your college is and what you're doing. With that being said though, Drianna, I don't know what you're going to get a master's degree for, but master's degrees are the riskiest educational degree you can get, and what I mean by that is 50% of them, you do not get a positive return on your investment... So please, run the numbers. Begging you.

I have a large sum saved up and my loans are 40k. Should I just pay it off now or wait?

Hannah, cool, I love the fact that you have saved up 50k, and I am again not an either/or person, I'm maybe both, maybe not, maybe just keep working on your plan for your loans...

You have to make a loan strategy first, and that is if you're working for eligible employment and going for PSLF and you've already been doing it for seven years, like finish that off, get your loans forgiven.If you've been doing time-based loan forgiveness, same deal, like keep doing that path. If you've just been like in limbo whittling it away and it's only been the last couple years you've been making good money and you think you're going to pay them off, well then maybe switch to the standard repayment plan and start snowballing that debt off, but letting that 50k keep growing...

What about fiscal sponsorships for PSLF?

Break it down, this sounds like a scam on the internet... Public Service Loan Forgiveness is just a federal program, it has those four requirements we've talked about: Direct loans, qualifying employment, qualifying repayment plan, 120 payments. The forms are all free online. Literally just sounds like a scam.

Submitted paperwork to move out of SAVE two weeks ago into a graduated payment plan, not a peep. What should I expect?

Kyliezy, number one is it takes two to three weeks on average, so nothing surprising there. Number two though, that graduated plan, like it gives me heartburn. Heartburn!

It's a trap, you're going to regret that in a few years. It's not going to count for loan forgiveness: public service or time-based loan forgiveness. If your goal is repayment, because you're choosing a repayment plan that's designed for repayment, look at the standard fixed extended, like not that one, or consider RAP.The reason I call it a trap, Kyliezy, is it seduces you... by this $40 a month lower payment... But what happens is, if it rises, and then you're going to decide, "This sucks, all these other plans are cheaper," and then you're going to switch and you've lost the time...

How does the FSA lower student loan payments?

So Rosa, a dependent care FSA, puts pre-tax money in the account. So by having it lower your adjusted gross income by using pre-tax money, you lower your student loan payment as well.

Aren't some of the plans available now going to be phased out?

So they've already, they're already phasing out, but it's Pay As You Earn and ICR are phasing out. IBR is going to continue, RAP is going to continue. The standard, graduated, and extended continue for existing borrowers, so.

I'm unemployed now, I had my loans consolidated in July. Everyone said we had to consolidate by July 1st. What should I do?

Jaylin, apply for IBR now. I don't know why you consolidated, neither here nor there, but yes, being unemployed is the best time to choose IBR... I don't know who everyone is, um, but not everyone said that.

I don't know where you're getting your information from. Consolidation served a valid reason, I don't know when you consolidated, or when you finished consolidation, or what your valid reason was.There's no valid reason to consolidate anymore. And regardless, if you have access to IBR, being unemployed is the best time to enroll in IBR.

Next year if I was to do married filing separately, it would only use my AGI for IBR?

Yes. So Haya, this is... I talk about this a lot. Marrying separately is not always a smart thing to do. In fact, it is 50/50.

You could literally end up costing yourself a lot of money, but you're not going to do it through your student loans... When you file separately, you and your spouse will pay more in taxes.The question is, how much more in taxes. And then you look at your student loans, and how much do you save by lowering your payment? Do you offset what you were supposed to pay, or not? And that's the math you have to run...

We needed to consolidate before July 1st for PSLF, right?

If you were a parent PLUS loan borrower and you had not previously consolidated, you needed to complete it by July 1st and never ever, ever, ever borrow a student loan again to have access to PSLF. That is correct, and it's basically the only valid reason for it... June 1st, whew, yeah that was, that is close. You are lucky, my friend. So B18, I don't know if you've already done it, but if you're already in ICR, once you make a payment under ICR, you can apply for IBR. IBR will likely be cheaper for you, and then make sure you're certifying your employment for PSLF.

I paid over $90,000 on my loans, can I ask for a refund?

You can't ask for a refund, Aspen. You just, you did it, you did a thing. I mean, you're getting them done, it's okay.

Would you return to school?

I would only go back to school if there was a clear pathway for me to build wealth with it. You know, I think the economy is definitely K-shaped, it is hit or miss, like, but on the same token, like there's more opportunity now than ever. And I think school is expensive, it takes time, and it takes energy, and if I do, I really hate people going back to school that are just trying to delay the inevitable... School can be helpful, but if you're only going to pay that money, you need to figure out something like, "If I do this, I will get more."

As a licensed social worker, could I qualify for loan forgiveness?

So I don't know what you're doing for work, but the programs that you would be eligible for are generally tied to your employment: Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a lot of states have loan forgiveness programs for social workers. So you work for 10 years for public service, and then you get your remaining balance forgiven... And then RAP's a great call. I mean for all of these plans, you need to be on a qualifying repayment plan, and that's going to be IBR or RAP...

Do you know when student aid updates? I paid off some of my loans and the site still shows my past balance.

So your loan servicer should update first, and then usually student aid updates a couple weeks later.

What if I am unemployed and not receiving unemployment benefits?

Yeah, totally. So if you're unemployed, either way, whether you're receiving unemployment or not receiving unemployment, you still submit alternative documentation and there's a little box on the IDR application that says "I'm unemployed," I forget what it says, they just posted it yesterday, the new box. Check the box, and then move on. If they ask for it, you just say I'm currently unemployed.

Is there a way to decrease your monthly payment when $1,400 is a lot of my income?

I'm guessing that's old IBR, and I'm guessing that RAP is about $200 less a month. But you're fixating on time-based loan forgiveness, when I actually think you need to be fixating on the total cost you're going to pay, because I would actually venture that you would pay less under RAP than you will on your IBR. Not only because you're going to save $2,400 a year for the next few years, you are also not going to see your loan grow.

So because of the principal reduction subsidy and the interest waiver, RAP is not going to grow as much, and so you're going to pay less of a tax bomb down the road than you would under IBR even with the five years...Also, you wanted to ask ways to lower it... you could lower your payments by contributing to a 401(k), you can contribute to an HSA, dependent FSA, things like that. Anything that can lower your taxable income will lower your student loan payment, but it will be an asset for the tax liability...

If I applied to switch my loan plan three years ago, but never finished it, does that application still work?

No, you need to apply. Old applications aren't processed, put in a new application.