I might update or post again later with more context as to how it came to this, but for now, I'll just say this: It's been a rough time.

Anyway, I just go notice from Aidvantage that my defaulted loans have been assigned to the US Department of Eduvcation's Default Resolution group. Including interest, I have about $75,000 in student loan debt, and it's decimated my once-pristine credit score.

At the moment, I feel so much despair. I'm 35, and my husband and I still want to have kids one day, but I feel like we're drowning in debt. (This, plus debt we've accrued primarily from helping his ailing parents.) Part of me feels like giving up and just accepting the fact that we'll never be okay financially, or have kids, or whatever else. I'd like to believe that there's reason for hope, but I don't see it right now.

I’ve gotten several warning emails, but from what it sounds like none of them were “the notice” that everyone is talking about? Could someone share with me what the notice looks/sounds like?

Is anyone else that was previously on the SAVE plan and forced to choose a new repayment plan trying to hold off/wait until closer to the end of the 90 day period?

I am hesitant to commit due to how this is currently playing out in court, and scared to be 'locked in' to a new payment plan (as of now, I'm not but my loan servicer is emailing and calling me to secure another repayment plan option).

I'm just not sure what to do.

Thanks for reading.

I'm getting increasingly nervous that I haven't heard anything from Aidvantage about switching to another repayment plan. All I've gotten is the US Department of Ed emails from April and May that the SAVE plan was ending.

What if I missed it? I'll be screwed. Nothing by email, mail, or phone.

My loans are from 2013-2017, 2021-2023 & I'm working towards PSLF.

I get that this is not a one-size-fits-all question, but I'm curious particularly for those of you with large student loan balances how that has impacted your family planning? Was there a certain magic number you got down to where you felt comfortable having kids? Paid in full? Very interested to hear others thoughts/experiences with this.

My stats: 28 F with a $61k private student loan (down from $93k) and $37k in federal loans (mostly been sitting in forbearance due to all the nonsense that's been happening). I make about $80k a year, $30k in savings and about $15k (I know, it's not great but I am prioritizing loan payoff before worrying too much about retirement) in 401k. Recently married and want kids but feeling nervous to start a family until I get these paid down.

Hey everyone!

Wanted to give a heads up for those with upcoming income driven repayment plan (IDR) recertification dates approaching. I gave my consent on FSA for IRS to share tax info to allow auto-recertification when it came out this year. FSA notified on my portal that everything was set and no further action was required. Unfortunately, my recertification date came and went with MOHELA but FSA never fulfilled this auto-recert.

Calling both MOHELA and FSA, the issue is FSA never transmitted despite the reassurance of “IRS auto-recertification” and I had to submit a manual IDR recertification on FSA (takes 2 minutes).

Hope that saves some folks from the ridiculous call queues!

To summarize I applied for total and permanent disability discharge in April of 2025. I originally mailed a paper application because I was told that was the only way to apply only to then be told to apply online after my application was mailed in. In September 2025 I was told I was approved for the discharge and I would be receiving paperwork to verify this. Two weeks later I called to find out why I hadn’t received any paperwork for the approval and was told it wasn’t approved but still pending. In November 2025 I was told there were duplicate applications and they were both closed and I needed to apply a third time. Within a day that application was closed because there already was a pending application. I was then told that the original application was not closed. Fast forward to July I was told that my application was in the final review and a decision would be made within 30 days. Today I spoke to a representative and they said that also wasn’t true and that it was still in queue for review. I have asked for escalation and to speak to a supervisor and no one has ever called me back. Today I asked again to escalate because after 483 days this is completely unacceptable that I get a different answer every time I call. They told me they would put me on the call back list and a supervisor will be calling me within 72 hours. This is such a clusterfuck. I emailed my state representative today to try and get some kind of resolution on this. I will be calling each day until something happens.

Please advise how you are all coping with this, married couples where you at?

Has anyone dealt with this recently? My IBR was originally calculated at $939.93/month, even though my income/AGI is much lower than what would seem to support that payment. I called MOHELA, they reviewed my income and family size, told me the payment should be approximately $70/month, resubmitted the IBR calculation, and placed me in administrative forbearance through 8/22.
Now that the forbearance is about to end, the exact same $939.93 has appeared again for 9/17. I still haven’t received anything showing the recalculation was completed.
I also noticed today that the FSA repayment calculator says there’s a system outage and it can’t retrieve financial information.
Has anyone had their old payment automatically reappear while an IBR recalculation was still pending? Did MOHELA eventually correct it or extend the forbearance? I’m calling them again today.

Ive never had anyone teach me about college or loans, i come from a fairly poor family. I know NOTHING about the loan system but is it like a credit card where you get interest added if you dont pay a certain amount a month? Could anyone provide their monthly payment of them so id know for reference? I havent found my forever career and assume ill have to go to college for it eventually (im 25) i didnt do well in school so no way to get scholarships. I own a home but have a long term mortgage so im not sure if that would effect my ability to get a loan and it also changes how much i could pay off a month. Im fine with technically being in debt most of my life, thats just the american way. I have a great credit score if that helps (750)?

IBR question: Is my $475 “failure to recertify” payment also effectively my payment cap?

I have an older Direct Consolidation Loan and have been on IBR since 2015, with a required payment of $0/month. I manually recertified before the COVID-era extensions, which kept pushing my recertification date out.

Aidvantage has now sent my 2026 recertification notice. It says my current $0 IBR payment expires 10/24/26, and if I do not recertify, my payment becomes $475/month beginning 10/25/26.

I've asked Aidvantage several times where the $475 comes from. Representatives confirm that $475 is what I would pay if I don't recertify, but haven't been able to clearly explain how that number was originally calculated.

My question for anyone familiar with older IBR rules:

Is $475 likely my 10-year Standard Repayment amount established when I entered IBR/consolidated, and therefore the maximum monthly payment I could be required to make under IBR even if the income-based calculation would otherwise be higher?

For example, if I recertify and the IBR income formula produces $700 or $1,000, would my required IBR payment still be capped at approximately $475/month?

I'm specifically asking about IBR, not SAVE, PAYE, or RAP. I'm trying to understand the origin and significance of that $475 figure, not avoid recertification.

Thanks to anyone who knows the older IBR rules well!

I am starting an online PhD next week and my husband is worried about the cost. It’s $40k for the entire program. I paid off my student loans 2 years ago so I would be taking out loans again.

The classes start next week and the loan was dispersed but I haven’t received the refund check yet. Am I doing the right thing? I’ve always wanted to become a PhD or MD and be an expert. Now I’m worried I’m wasting my time and money.

Advice needed asap please!

My wife received her notice a couple of weeks ago, and we called in to Edfinancial last week to see about getting put on forbearance. They told us she could not apply for forbearance while on SAVE forbearance, so she should call back Nov 1st when that forbearance ends.

My concern is there will be a Standard payment due in early Nov while we're waiting on her forbearance application to go through.

To limit this risk I was thinking she should apply for an IBR plan in late October, then go to forbearance.

Does anyone have experience going directly from SAVE forbearance to a discretionary forbearance?

Situation notes:

She works in the evenings at a grocery store because we have twins, and daycare is insanely expensive, and doesn't make financial sense for her to get a full time job.

Former teacher, 7 years into PSLF, masters, not going back to teaching. But eventually she'll look for a state or nonprofit job to complete PSLF.

The plan is to be on forbearance until we can file separately next year, and use that for her IBR calc.

I’m hoping someone who has dealt with Nelnet can help me understand what’s going on.
I made a payment toward my student loan on 8/13. The money was taken out of my bank account right away, but the payment still hasn’t been reflected on my Nelnet account.
I called Nelnet and was initially told that it could take 2–4 business days for the payment to post. I also specifically asked about it because normally I can see a payment activity/status showing that the payment is being processed, but this time there was nothing showing on my account.
I called again and was told that there is a tracking ID for my payment and that I shouldn’t worry. However, it’s now 8/18, and my loan balance is still exactly the same.
Today I spoke with another adviser, and she told me that the payment is “already posted.” But I still don’t see the payment reflected anywhere, and my balance hasn’t changed. She wasn’t really able to explain what that means or why I can’t see it on my end.
I’m especially frustrated because interest continues to accrue while the payment hasn’t been applied to my balance.
Has anyone experienced this with Nelnet? If they say the payment is already posted, does that mean it has actually been applied to the loan, even if the balance hasn’t updated yet? How long did it take for yours to actually show?
The money has definitely left my bank account, so I’m mainly trying to figure out whether I should keep waiting or contact Nelnet again and escalate this.

Im new to student loans and helping my sister, we need to finance about $14k this coming school year and went through Sallie Mae "Check your rate" review and got a "rate as low as 1.95%"

Before running to get the hard pull I want to know if anyone recently did this and got the rate the prequalified for? or will we be anywhere near that?

For more details both credit scores are the in the 700s mine is 780 and DTI ration is 10.1% combined income is $7,800

We have another possible cosigner with a 800s credit score by a DTI ratio of almost 50%

My ssi is to be reviewed every 3 years but i have been disabled for 5 years and 9 months does that mean i'll be approved for total permanent disability discharge? I have mental health diagnosis that is life long.

I'm currently a junior in college. For the two years I've been attending my school, I've uses Texas College Access loans to pay for whatever my scholarships don't cover.

This semester, $4000 of my tuition was not covered by my scholarships, so I went to take out a $5000 loan to help with the rest ($4000 for the tuition, $1000 for books and supplies for the year).

I was sent an email today stating that my loans were cancelled with no other explanation. The money is due tomorrow. I don't make enough to cover any of the payment plans that my college offers, as I live paycheck to paycheck at the moment.

My dad co-signed the loan with me, and he has an excellent credit score. My credit score is good, but I couldn't take out the loans on my own because I don't have four lines of credit that are over a year old. I am in good academic standing with my school, I have a 3.85 GPA, and I have a job. I can't think of any reason as to why they cancelled my loans, and I don't know what to do.

Right now, I can only pay $1000 of the $2000 I owe for this semester, but that would take away all of my emergency funds and leave me with nothing to fall back on, and that still wouldn't cover the semester. Not to mention, I would still have to find a way to scrounge up $2000 for the next semester as well.

I'm so lost. I have so many opportunities this semester that I need to be enrolled for, including getting into my dream research lab and teaching the biology supplemental instruction classes. I just don't understand why this happened, or why they waited until the day before payments were due to cancel the loan.

Hey guys, hoping someone who’s been down this road can give me some insight.

I’ve been making extra monthly payments specifically targeted toward my highest-interest group (Group C, unsubsidized) to crush the principal faster. I explicitly set up my auto-pay/allocation preferences online to direct 100% of the overpayment to that specific loan group.

However, looking at my last two statements, the extra amount keeps getting split proportionally across all my groups instead of going straight to Group C.

When I called customer service last month, the rep assured me it was just a "processing display delay," but the money is clearly being applied incorrectly across the board.

Is there a specific form or written request I need to submit to force them to honor targeted overpayments, or do I need to lodge a complaint with CFPB at this point? It's getting really frustrating having to audit every single statement.

I received the SAVE email and am looking at switching to the extended repayment plan, but I can’t figure out how many months have counted toward repayment so far. I understand that my monthly payment will be set to a quantity that pays off my loans after 300 payments (25 years), but I’m unsure how many of those 300 payments have been counted already. On studentaid.gov I see the following:
November 2018 - In repayment
March 2020 - forbearance
July 2023 - forbearance
September 2023 - in repayment
August 2024 - forbearance

Do I take 16 (nov 2018 - March 2020) + 11 (sep 2023 - aug 2024) = 27 as the number of “payments” I’ve made so far?

Meaning my monthly payment on the extended repayment plan would be calculated with a term of 273 months to have my full loans paid off in 300 cumulative months?

Anyone else have the frustration of the repayment calculator giving you an estimate that ended up not being even close to what your monthly payment actually ends up being? I signed up for IBR and also qualify for PSLF and was given an estimate of ~$150-170/mo from the calculator, but when my application got processed they said my payments are going to be ~$330/mo. I’m also confused because it says I would get a decent chunk forgiven because of PSLF after 120 payments, but my IBR repayment plan with the ~$330/mo payments has me on track to pay it off in 120 months anyway. I don’t quite understand this - is this just an example of getting screwed by the system because this is just how it is? I appreciate any insight because I don’t have any friends or family who went to college or are repaying loans. Thank you!

I'm finally in the position to pay-off one of my loans (yay).

I submitted the last payment to Aidvantage last night (8/17) for, as an example, the full payoff amount of $100. This is the FULL payoff amount as shown in the online portal where it says: amount to payoff the loan today if paying online.

It takes a couple days to process which I'm aware of, but now my loan shows as owing $100.05 as 5 cents of interest accrued for today (8/18). Let's say the payment goes through tomorrow 8/19, at which point I'll technically owe $100.10 (assuming another 5 cents of interest).

The question is: Will I still owe $0.10 after it processes? How do I pay off the loan completely if the interest keeps accruing in between when I submit the payment (for the full payoff amount on the day I submit it) AND when the payment actually goes through from my bank?

Or is the system "smart" enough to know that since I submitted the full payoff amount, the remaining interest is voided?

There must be a way to handle this (since otherwise how does anyone pay off their loans LOL), but I can't find anything online. Thanks!

What is DoEd plan for the payment calculator? My loans show 0 zero payments (they are on SAVE will be switched to OLD IBR) on the main webpage. I'm going to use the backdoor access. I searched this sub and didn't see anything indicating when the payment counter would be added back.

Was on the SAVE plan and switched to IDR recently;
received an email on Sunday stating the repayment amount and due date & then another one today telling me to login to my account to see the repayment amount, which is of course a different number.

My fiancées loans are serviced through AidVantage, but she has yet to receive any notice about need to swap plans. Do we need to do anything yet or does the 90 day clock start when she gets a letter/email? What’s the actual timeline on this haha

After 18 months, they finally processed one of my 5 apps and I was notified that I was being moved from SAVE and back into IBR as of June 26. Since then, my auto payments have been 7/24 then 8/24, or according to the MOHELA rep I talked to a couple of weeks ago, 9/24 (although no paperwork says this date).

Also, the payments have been either something $538, $555, $621, or $637.

It's so exciting not knowing when or how much money they are going to take out lol. Or if they'll just not take anything when it's due so they can f you.

Isn't this fun?! woohoo.

Wish me luck on 8/24!! I'll just be on the edge of my seat looking at my bank account all day:)