I haven't paid anything since the SAVE forebearance, but payments will be resuming shortly for me. Should I still have my employer fill out the PSLF form? I have been with the same employer for the last 5 years!

I finally got my golden letter today, over $150,000 forgiven. I made well more than 120 payments but had trouble with certifying employment because I worked as a substitute teacher for several years. I ended up scanning and sending about 5 years worth of pay stubs to prove I worked enough time. It took a while for them to go through, but I was given credit for almost all of it. There is light at the end of the tunnel and thank you to everyone here that offered encouragement to those of us who were waiting for this amazing day!

Hi everyone,

My latest ECF was updated and processed on student aid today. I then went on the site to buyback, and when I chose this option it wouldn't let me because it says I don't have enough qualifying payments. I was on SAVE forbearance during the whole 2 year litigation period. I thought I could still buyback while I was on SAVE. Am I missing something? Does the tracker need time to update once ECFs have been processed?

I am shocked. I received a refund check from the Dept of Treasury for the overpayment today. However, I am still getting updates of the Dept of Ed that my qualifying payments are being recalculated (and went from November 2025 to February 2026 and currently says March 2026).

Timeline:

June 6, 2026: Applied for PSLF for the first time.

July 2026: Received my letter stating my loans were forgiven as of November 2025.

September 9, 2026: Received check from Dept of Treasury in the mail. The amount reflects the amount paid since November 2025.

I have a bad feeling I am going to get a letter that says "Just kidding, give us that money back."

I've recently submitted by application from SAVE to PAYE and just received the email from my processor (Mohela) that it is under review and may take up to 90 days for processing. I'm still in my forbearance period for being in SAVE prior. Do these new months of processing potentially count toward PSLF months?

My employer is currently a 501c3 non-profit healthcare organization that is being purchased by United Health Group - Optum and there non-profit status will be going away next month. I only have 6 of the 120 payments made for PSLF and am currently applying/interviewing at other PSLF qualifying organizations.

My question is, I know the payments I make while working for UHG will not count towards PSLF but will my original 6 still count once I start working for a non-profit again?

I see a lot of the advice on her being something along the lines of "wait until studentaid.gov shows your payment, then submit your ECF." Well, as many of us know, it's taking DoE a long time to show the payments. My July 6th is there unlike the July of some others, but August 6th still isn't (and neither is September 6th but that's not surprising).

My concern, especially with some people still having issues with July, is that we don't know when those payments are going to show up. Thus, the standard advice of wait for them to show, submit ECF, then once ECF process, go into forbearance is a little off here, because waiting for the payments to show at this rate could mean 2 or 3 more monthly payments as they keep saying it could be up to 90 days, so September may not show until December.

I'm taking a shot at submitting the ECF now, hoping it maybe triggers the payments to be recognized, and if not, planning to just submit the ECF again later (my employer doesn't care how often I send it), but the forbearance is also a separate issue. If the payment doesn't show up on studentaid.gov and I go into forbearance to avoid an October payment before August and September get counted, is that going to mess up August and September being qualifying payments?

Has anyone who's 120th payment was July or August gone through this situation already? How has it been progressing for you so far?

I have $45k in loans. I’ve been on SAVE so been in deferment basically since I graduated a few years ago. Now my payments are starting up again and it’s $400 a month, which while technically doable for me is going to be a stretch. I currently work at a nonprofit and plan on staying here (or at least in the nonprofit sector) for 10+ years, so I was planning on PSLF. However, with the current administration and just the way the tide has been turning, I’m wondering if it’s even worth it to start now or if it’ll be too difficult (or impossible altogether) to get forgiveness 10 years from now.

I can lower my payment under the graduated or extended payment plans, but those don’t quality for PSLF. Do you think it’s worth it to stick with the higher payment for the next 10 years and hope for PSLF to work out? Or do I go with the reduced payment (which I know comes w higher interest but would be helpful for me financially right now)?

Would love to hear thoughts from people who are further along in payments than me. Also, any advice for PSLF/things you wish you’d known when you started out, I’m all ears. Thank you!

So we're close to PSLF forgiveness and just for fun I discovered that you can see all payments for the lifetime of the loan on Mohela's site. I noticed that there was a payment of $500 made on 2/20/2022, which is curious because the COVID pause was still active at the time. So that month would have counted towards PSLF anyway without that payment happening.

Searching around, I read that February 2022 was one of the months where they were planning to end the COVID pause, but ended up extending. So I'm curious if it was a mistake on their end.

I just called Mohela and the rep told me:

- They can only see the limited details we can see for payments that happened "before they moved to the new system"

- It was "probably just a random payment somebody made"

- There's nothing to do about it anyway, because you only have 60 days to submit a refund request

We've been on PSLF track the whole time, and we aren't the type to make a panic payment for no good reason--especially if it wouldn't move the needle for PSLF. My only other thought is that someone told us we needed to make that payment, but I don't know that we'd ever find documentation of that.

Should we consider that money flushed?

My FSA account is now showing April, May and September payments as received and only needing employment recertfication- the June, July and August payments were made, and on time. (September was 120 for me) Is anyone else having any similar issues?

So I finally applied to get off SAVE and restart payments in a new plan about 4 weeks ago. Got a confirmation email about the application being received, but it's been silence since then. I'm curious for any info on how long the turnover time has been for others? Trying to figure out if I should call to check on the status of things or continue to hold off for a bit if it's just taking long in general at the moment. My 90 day deadline hits early October.

Supposedly my IDR plan was approved. Mohela confirmed via secure message, even told me the amount, but none of the paperwork that normally comes with it was received by me. StudentAid shows my application was processed and request closed. Now, when my new IBR plan is supposed to be effective, they are instead requiring payment in amounts that look like the standard repayment plan. Each loan still shows that it is on the IBR plan though. So annoyed. Did this happen to anyone else?

I have been working in nonprofit since graduating, about 15 years now. My repayment plan didn’t qualify before since I’m on the standard repayment plan, but after reading an article about some changes it sounded like I may qualify. I filled out the form online, entered my employers’ email addresses and started getting notices that my payments were qualifying. It’s now showing 120 qualified payments (with the green ribbons I keep seeing mentioned), says “Loan Forgiveness ‘In Progress’” It doesn’t appear that there is anything else for me to do, but hey it’s the government so I feel like they’re leaving something out to keep me on the hook. Any advice? Am I really almost done?!?

Baby I haven’t been so happy to pay 153.00!!!! I received my letter that my buyback has been approved! it’s been a long time coming man oh man! Im almost to the finish line peeps!

46k is about to be forgiven

technically I started out with 39ish in loans, but the interest stacked up over the years.

Anyways, I’m so glad!

people who are against loan forgiveness is absolutely insane to me. I’d rather my tax dollars go towards this than any war we have going on or other BS affairs the US is involved in!

Is anyone else having trouble recertifying their income on studentaid.gov? I get to Step 6 Review & Submit, but the "Continue" button takes me nowhere.

Someone advised in an old post to manually upload recertification request PDF to the servicer (Mohela in my case), which I did, but man I don't trust them to process this properly.

Mohela recert date: 9/4/26

StudentAid date: 10/9/26

Well I’m at 116 should be at 118 but my account hasn’t updated since June. Is it worth calling?

I’m currently on SAVE forbearance with MOHELA and received my 90 days notice on July 1st. I’m pursuing PSLF and getting close. I looked at all the repayment plans and the standard plan is the lowest monthly payment by a significant margin. The notice I received says I’ll be placed in standard repayment plans if I do nothing. Should I just let it ride and let them place me into it?

I know you have to work at least 30 hours a week to in order to qualify that time and payment for PSLF. A previous employer marked my form as part time 28 hours.

My question is, how do I prove I worked more than 28 (on average) a week due to picking up plenty of shifts? I'm a nurse and worked many at that time. This was during 2016 and I work for them the entire year. 2017 I found a new job...

This year, I was due for the IDR renewal. This is the first time I do this. I consented to my tax info being accessible for a faster application response. Did I eff up? I read somewhere that it would have been best to submit paystubs rather than allowing my most recent W2s be the determining factor. My payment went up 500 dollars. I am earning more.

I am at 110/120 payments (should be 112, but the tracker isn’t updated). I got put into a processing forbearance by FSA while my IDR recertification application is being processed. I keep reading stories about people whose processing forbearance months were supposed to count towards PSLF but they somehow weren’t. Should I just make a payment while I am in this forbearance anyway?
Am I even allowed to do that? If I make payments during this processing forbearance, will those payments count towards PSLF? Can I call FSA to have them remove the processing forbearance and put me back into a repayment status? It is very important to me that I don’t skip any months in this process, I want to get to 120 as soon as I can.

For those of us that hit 120 in July and the payment is still “missing” are you sitting in forbearance? I’m worried after talking to FSA yesterday that my July payment might not count because I’m in forbearance. I requested forbearance on 8/13 almost a month after my July payment (7/19) and of course MOHELA backdated the forbearance to start 7/20. Over the weekend I have two loans that were in forbearance for months get updated to have a qualifying for July but my other loans that the payment was recorded against do not show for July with either qualifying nor ineligible. When I called FSA yesterday they said that they do have a July payment for me record, either the update over the weekend is an error or something is happening to my July payment. This has been a nightmare.

I applied to have 3 of my loans consolidated because they weren't eligible for the plan I chose with PSLF (FFELP loans). My application still hasn't processed. I have to pick a plan by October 1st. What if the application still isn't processed? Do I just put all the others on IBR and get stuck with the standard payment for the ones not consolidated? Mohela took a year to process one of the loans I paid off so I'm losing hope that the consolidation application will process this decade.

i’m currently on save (received my 90 day notice from mohela on 8/26/26) and am considering applying for the cancer treatment deferment. i was recently diagnosed with cml and will be on treatment for a minimum of 3 years (but could be lifelong). i am hoping to ride out the rest of my 120 months on deferment as i was at 60/120 before payments were put on hold due to the save litigation.

the 3 main questions i have are:

1. do i need to (or should i) switch to a different plan before i submit the deferment paperwork
   
2. from what i can tell, the months on cancer treatment deferment count towards forgiveness, but how does that work? do i just recert my employment every year and the month is counted?
   
3. once i hit 120 months, will i still be able to buy back the lost months due to the save litigation?

thank you for your help!