Student Loan Gurus- ?

[keyslover]

Is there an "easy" way to find out how many payments have been made to my Fed Loans for income based forgiveness?  The servicer has changed a few times, would this be something FedLoans would handle?
 

Thanks

[wanderingback]

Have you submitted your pslf forms?

[keyslover]

Jan 8, 2024 19:30:19 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Have you submitted your pslf forms?

It isn't public service, but income based payments- does that matter?

[ellipses84]

Login at studentaid.gov

I think this used to be the Fed Loan .org website… I still have that login info written down… anyway if you never logged in you may need to set up a new .gov account.

It should show all your info including who your servicer is with a link to their website. It was my understanding a lot of the non-PSLF forgiveness is on hold but payments resumed. There may be more affordable payment plan options for you if you still need to pay longer. If you think you’ll be forgiven it makes sense to make payments as low as possible. There may be some loopholes for people to get forgiveness now. If you can’t find the info you need or have questions, call or message them.

[heygrey]

I consolidated fed loans ~1.5 years ago and when I log into studentaid.gov is only lists the payments I've made since the consolidation. However, they are going to go back and count payments made in previous years to other lenders towards the IBR forgiveness. The person I talked to said they would start updating those counts in early 2024, but it would take a while to get everyone done.

I would start by logging into that account to see what it says. It may have an accurate count for you already.

[gretchenindisguise]

You'll likely have to do it manually until the IDR adjustment has been applied to your account.

I can give better step by step directions tomorrow if you can't find it, but essentially you'll want to look at your loan status history and count any month in repayment even if just for one day.

With the IDR adjustment, every single month in repayment will count for IDR forgiveness regardless of payment plan, if you were late, or even if you paid at all. As long as it shows as "in repayment" it will count.

If you have 12+ months in a row or 36+ months total of forbearance, ALL of that time will also count.

If you had economic hardship deferment it will count.

If you had in school deferment it will not count.

If you consolidated, all time pre- consolidation will count. To see that time in studentaid.gov, look at the loans that say $0. The loan status history will be there.

I found it easiest to make an excel spreadsheet when doing manual counts like this.

[gretchenindisguise]

Jan 8, 2024 21:16:48 GMT -5 keyslover said:

Jan 8, 2024 19:30:19 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Have you submitted your pslf forms?

It isn't public service, but income based payments- does that matter?

Yes it matters. There are no forms for IDR forgiveness.

[wanderingback]

Jan 8, 2024 21:16:48 GMT -5 keyslover said:

Jan 8, 2024 19:30:19 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Have you submitted your pslf forms?

It isn't public service, but income based payments- does that matter?

Oh got it, sorry, I misunderstood!
Yeah those are definitely different. Hopefully you can manually count your payments.

[keyslover]

OMG- major headache with decisions. I am going to word vomit and if anyone has advice, throw it out there.

I have my loans consolidated and now I can consolidate them again- is this beneficial? Do I lose any payment status? I try the loan simulator and it tells me my pay off will be another 25 years.

For those that are married- did you/would you consolidate with your spouse? Wondering if that would impact payment status. . .

Is there someone that I can actually talk to about this?

[ellipses84]

If you already consolidated I don’t see why you would consolidate again. Consolidating with a spouse created a nightmare for a lot of people in the PSLF program, making them ineligible for forgiveness (and a nightmare for those who got divorced later), so I wouldn’t consolidate with a spouse unless I had a 💯 guarantee it would all be forgiven.

[ellipses84]

I don’t know the best way to get a hold of the student aid people - probably instant message / chat if available or call them and expect to wait on hold for a long time. Their info will be better than the calling the company you make payments through. There is a FB group with great moderators for PSLF. Maybe there’s one for regular forgiveness? There’s some good educators on Instagram who post the latest forgiveness updates and break it down in a simpler way.

[gretchenindisguise]

Jan 9, 2024 11:23:34 GMT -5 keyslover said:

OMG- major headache with decisions. I am going to word vomit and if anyone has advice, throw it out there.

I have my loans consolidated and now I can consolidate them again- is this beneficial? Do I lose any payment status? I try the loan simulator and it tells me my pay off will be another 25 years.

For those that are married- did you/would you consolidate with your spouse? Wondering if that would impact payment status. . .

Is there someone that I can actually talk to about this?

You can't consolidate with a spouse. It was a thing for a short period but they stopped because they realized what a disaster it was.


How many loans do you have? If it's more than one (it may look like two because they keep subsidized separate from unsubsidized), the you can consolidate again. The benefit of that is that the new consolidation loan will be credited with the highest number of IDR payments. This is only true bc of the IDR adjustment and the deadline for consolidation without it impacting your count was just pushed out to April 2024.

Payment estimater will say 25 years if you consolidate now because it isn't taking the IDR adjustment into account.

You can talk to your loan servicer about this, but they are frequently ill informed. I am an expert in pslf and IDR by proxy, I'm happy to answer any questions. Also happy to pm.

[keyslover]

Jan 9, 2024 12:17:00 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

Jan 9, 2024 11:23:34 GMT -5 keyslover said:

OMG- major headache with decisions. I am going to word vomit and if anyone has advice, throw it out there.

I have my loans consolidated and now I can consolidate them again- is this beneficial? Do I lose any payment status? I try the loan simulator and it tells me my pay off will be another 25 years.

For those that are married- did you/would you consolidate with your spouse? Wondering if that would impact payment status. . .

Is there someone that I can actually talk to about this?

You can't consolidate with a spouse. It was a thing for a short period but they stopped because they realized what a disaster it was.


How many loans do you have? If it's more than one (it may look like two because they keep subsidized separate from unsubsidized), the you can consolidate again. The benefit of that is that the new consolidation loan will be credited with the highest number of IDR payments. This is only true bc of the IDR adjustment and the deadline for consolidation without it impacting your count was just pushed out to April 2024.

Payment estimater will say 25 years if you consolidate now because it isn't taking the IDR adjustment into account.

You can talk to your loan servicer about this, but they are frequently ill informed. I am an expert in pslf and IDR by proxy, I'm happy to answer any questions. Also happy to pm.

Thank you!  So I have a few months to determine if it is worthwhile to consolidate.

I checked my servicer website and they said they couldn't give me the info, then I was able to chat with Feds, they said talk to my servicer again and ask to speak to someone higher up, they do have all payment information even though they are new to me since pandemic. 

I may take you up on your offer!  

[gretchenindisguise]

Jan 9, 2024 13:58:11 GMT -5 keyslover said:

Jan 9, 2024 12:17:00 GMT -5 gretchenindisguise said:

You can't consolidate with a spouse. It was a thing for a short period but they stopped because they realized what a disaster it was.


How many loans do you have? If it's more than one (it may look like two because they keep subsidized separate from unsubsidized), the you can consolidate again. The benefit of that is that the new consolidation loan will be credited with the highest number of IDR payments. This is only true bc of the IDR adjustment and the deadline for consolidation without it impacting your count was just pushed out to April 2024.

Payment estimater will say 25 years if you consolidate now because it isn't taking the IDR adjustment into account.

You can talk to your loan servicer about this, but they are frequently ill informed. I am an expert in pslf and IDR by proxy, I'm happy to answer any questions. Also happy to pm.

Thank you!  So I have a few months to determine if it is worthwhile to consolidate.

I checked my servicer website and they said they couldn't give me the info, then I was able to chat with Feds, they said talk to my servicer again and ask to speak to someone higher up, they do have all payment information even though they are new to me since pandemic. 

I may take you up on your offer!  

They very likely won't be able to give you a good estimate on how many months will count for the IDR adjustment.

I'm curious if you'll be able to get your full payment history from your servicer. While they should have it, so many balls were dropped when folks were switched between servicers, the chances of them actually having it feels low to me. It definitely doesn't hurt to ask.

I think doing it the manual way I described above would ultimately take you much less time when you add in hold times and repeated calling to the servicer though.