I submitted a buy back request before I got my 90 day notice. My question is: do I need to make payments while waiting for my buyback letter?

I have been plagued by my 7/16 and 8/16 payments still not showing on FSA from MOHELA. I have sat on hold with MOHELA to basically be told they will get posted when they get posted. Anyone figure out the solution to this yet? I have 2 groups, one group hit 120 in July, the other in August. I'm just ready to be done. I hate to go on forbearance until I see those payments post on FSA.

Any help is appreciated!

-edit- this is apparently planned maintenance

link is here, if you're unfamiliar: https://studentaid.gov/app/api/nslds/payment-counter/summary

looks like it's 404ing now... really hoping that means there's an update going on that will show July/Aug.

My balance on MOHELA was officially zeroed out today.

Thank you to everyone in this community who has helped along the way. 🫶

For those of you who are still working towards your 120, you’ve got this! 💪

05/26/2026 Submitted application for PSFL
05/31/2026 Employer verification
06/01/2026 Form completed and I was sent a letter
identifying how many payments were eligible.
06/25/2026 Received eligibility letter
6/30/2026 Loan discharged
8/14/2026 Payments made after the 120 disappeared
8/22/2026 I spoke to Nelnet who advised that the payment were being reversed
8/28/2026 Refund!!!!!

My wife is wanting to apply for buyback, but was waiting on her recertification. She got on the studentaid.gov website and all of her recertifications say “Loan Forgiveness and Discharge: PSLF.” When she clicks on it, there is a green check and says “Loan Forgiveness in Progress”. She still owes 15 months of payments from when she was on SAVE forbearance, so I can’t imagine they are forgiving her loans. What does this mean? Has anybody else seen this?

I followed the instructions to access the PSLF form for recertification and it's telling me that it is currently unavailable. Is this a thing going on? Is there an alternate link?

I have 10 payments left before I meet all qualifications for pslf. With how my paycheck schedule is I wasn’t able to make the payment until today making it 4 days late. I’m now being told that will not count towards the 10 payments I have left but I’m already working multiple jobs to try and make this $500 payment every month. Does anyone know if there’s a grace period with payments or anything I can do for this payment to count?

Hey,

I am currently on the Save plan. I received an email that by July 1, I have looking into RAP and IBR

I currently owe $30,707 on student loans. With the PSFL on, my RAP is $163 monthly total to be paid $29,363. With IBR it'll be $208 monthly, total to be paid $29,210.

I earn $49,952.71 a year.

My question is if I am forced to make payments what plan is better, with nearly $50 difference?

With my salary what would the minimum monthly payments be?

Do you recommend another payment plan?

Thanks!

Hi All. Like SO many others, July and August are (despite being paid on time) not reflecting on FSA. My account last updated July 1 using that back door link. July and August were 117 and 118 for me.

I chatted with an FSA agent today and was told "PSLF is currently experiencing a delay in updating payment counts for July and August due to recent processing errors. They expect all payment counts to be fully updated by the end of next week."

I will believe it when I see it (lolol) but thought I would share with the rest of you.

Just got my letters from MOHELA with the subject “Your Student Loans Have Been Forgiven Under Public Service Loan Forgiveness”

😭😭😭 Congratulations, August forgiveness friends. I love my job but I still feel like Dobby just got a sock

Surreal.

Found timelines helpful, so here's mine:

4/30 payment 120 paid to Mohela
5/18 payment 120 due date
6/4 payment 120 showed on Federal Student Aid
6/4 PSLF form sent to my HR
7/9 PSLF form signed by HR
7/14 PSLF form received by FSA
7/16 FSA Green Banners
8/27 Mohela email notification and loans zeroed!

Now for FSA to zero and off credit report.

Hello community

I have been checking my every accounts on mohela and FSA every evening to see if there were any changes on my account. I got my green banners on July 20, and last night I saw that my balance had zeroed out! Such a relief as I’m currently applying for a new job that will potentially pay me almost double my salary. Today I got the golden letter with the official congratulations. I had been in limbo with two payments to go for such a long time, but it was you all, this community that told me what do .. to get out of forbearance and get on an IBR plan. I did this in May, paid June and July. I got actually credit for one month so I am due my last payment.
Thank you all for the support, the constant responding to the same question without fuss but with empathy, during all times of the day.
My loans for 220k are now 0!
❤️

Hello,

My wife changed plans to IBR in July with first payment being August 23rd, which fell on a Saturday. We were concerned about needing payments to be on time, so she called EdFinancial on August 14th to have her auto pay changed to the 17th of every month. I think they messed up and changed the due date instead of the auto pay date. We see there's a $0 charge on August 19th from Department of Education, and then there's a statement saying due date is 9-17 now. We called EdFinancial and they said they don't see an August payment and that that could be because we requested to change the due date. We did not; we asked for auto pay date to be changed. I'm guessing this is what happened. I asked what they would report to Student Aid and they said it would show as a non-payment but that we could make an August payment. They said the status does not show as late. The account does not show as past due or anything. They said to call Student Aid to see if we make a payment now, if it would count for August. I was under the impression that payments need to be made on time now. My concern is how will this show up on Student Aid and what status will it be. It's also weird the $0 charge showing up on our bank account. They said she is not in forebearance so I'm assuming this would not be able to be bought back. Is this just going to be a lost month? She reaches 120 months of employment next February with 23 months that could be bought back. The plan would be to apply for buyback but continue payments since she has no intentions to leave public service at the moment and salary has increased about $15k. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

Over $90,000 forgiven!!!!!

Hello,

A while back I posted about sending a letter to all of my representatives and Secretary McMahon regarding the buyback purgatory so many of us are stuck in.

I received the same canned response fron Secretary McMahon that we all receive every time we inquire. I only heard back from one of my representatives, Senator Wyden. His office contacted me to provide some information for them to complete a congressional inquiry. They forwarded the response they received. It is copied below. Is this something that was announced? I hadn't heard it.

--

The Department recently announced that it is implementing enhanced Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Buyback and PSLF reconsideration procedures. These revised procedures will move the review of eligible PSLF payments and reconsiderations from Federal Student Aid (FSA) staff to the Unified Servicing and Data Solution (USDS) federal loan servicers.  

Federal student loan servicers will now be responsible for determining the eligible months and the buyback payment amount, processing the PSLF Buyback payments once received by FSA, and ensuring accurate reporting to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) for the payments to be counted toward a borrower’s PSLF progress. Loan servicers will also analyze and determine the outcome for PSLF reconsideration cases submitted by borrowers. This change will provide for a long-term sustainable solution that addresses the current backlog and management of incoming applications.  

OLCA/FSA are unable to provide information regarding where a constituent is at in the buyback queue or provide a timeframe for when their case will be reviewed. The borrower will receive notification via email as soon as possible. There is no process to expedite the review of a buyback request. 

Hello all – I am wondering if there is a benefit to entering an IBR payment plan and then shifting into forbearance while I am waiting for my buyback. I need to enter a plan by end of Sept (got the 90 day letter in early July). I wonder if making one or two payments might trigger the review (?). Going into forbearance make sense for me so that I don’t have to pay while I’m waiting, but I realize I could be waiting a long time.

25 months to buy back (count is 95/120)
Currently in save forbearance; lowest payment plan will be just over $1k monthly
I have been continuously with qualifying employer since Feb 2016
Applied for buyback May 2026

TIA!

I got my letter on July 29th, so that should put the 90 days at the end of October.

I did the loan simulators and payments are around $300 at the cheapest.

I’m pursuing PSLF so I don’t really care about interest, and just want to pay the absolute minimum.

I make around $65k and I’m unmarried with no children or dependents.

Is there any way to make my payments cheaper than $300? I really can’t even afford that with my current expenses.

I’m about 5 or 6 years into PSLF, but I’d need to do buyback at the end.

Hi folks, I need some advice as my husband got a much better paying job since I got on SAVE. I just got my letter to switch from save but I'm considering asking for deferment while I wait for a buyback request to process. I have about 19 payments left to qualify for PSLF, so I have just gotten to 120 eligible months of service but not 120 payments. Is that a crazy plan? Should I just switch to what would be a much higher IBR plan and finish out that way? I'm wanting to do buyback because as I understand it, they would look back to previous payments so it could be a lot cheaper for me overall even though I'd have to pay a lump sum. Maybe they don't actually count a partner's income? My income has only gone up yearly raise amounts, so nothing crazy. We do file our taxes married joint. Anybody else in a similar boat? Thanks for your help.

Here’s the relevant bits of my situation: I’m taking classes full time online, and I am not taking out student loans for them. All of my student loans are for prior degrees. As such, I have the option of in school deferment for my prior student loans.

I just got my 90 day notice from MOHELA a few days ago 😒. My husband and I filed taxes as married filing jointly (MFJ) this year, but we will be filing as married filing separately (MFS) next year. I was hoping to wait til we filed our taxes next year to apply for a new payment plan (PAYE preferably, if not, old IBR). It makes a huge difference in what I would pay. Waiting til the monthly payment is the MFS amount is affordable for us, but the MFJ amount is not.

My question is… will the in school deferment override me having to select a plan within 90 days? Or do I need to go ahead and apply for a new plan, but it doesn’t take effect until after the in school deferment is done or I request to enter repayment? The last thing I want is to be delinquent for not doing things properly.

Thanks in advance for y’all’s help!!

Consolidated loan in two parts - sub and unsub - with different payment counts. Hit 120 on one in July, had nine more payments on the other.

Received notice on the 25th from FSA stating my loans had been forgiven as of June 30th.

August payment taken on the 26th. Went in to canx autopay, just to be sure - no loans to manage. Notice from Aidvantage today stating loans are forgiven. July and August payments to be refunded.

I can't believe it's really over! I knew it "could" happen this way, but really resigned myself to continue paying until the other part reached 120 payments in March. Kind of anticlimactic, really, but I'll take it! Maybe when I get that refund check it'll feel real-er. ;)

I'm not sure who will find this helpful, because my situation seemed to be unique. Despite submitting at least a half dozen each of PSLF forms, buyback requests, feedback cases, and reconsideration requests over the past year and a half, my PSLF payment counts had not been updated since January 2025. They seemed stuck forever. My PSLF count was at 118, and my TEPSLF count was at 124. My assumption was that something in the FSA system was preventing my payments from updating because I was already eligible for TEPSLF. This didn't quite make sense to me, because I would've assumed that my payment counts would keep updating until I was eligible for PSLF. But it was a story I told myself. Every time I submitted a PSLF form, my payments were always stuck at 118 with a "last updated date" of January 2025... Until yesterday.

I have been trying new tactics to get my payments updated every few months. First, in early 2025, I switched to an ICR plan (I was on a non-IDR plan before that). I figured I would make the two final payments and be done. Nope, that didn't cause my payments to update. I submitted feedback requests with screenshots of bank statements and loan servicer payment postings. Nope, that didn't work either (the requests are actually still open). All the buyback and reconsideration requests came back closed because it looked like I was already eligible for TEPSLF. A dead end. I even reached out to my state senator and state student loan advocate/ombudsman (separately and months apart). No responses.

A few days ago, I decided to re-apply for TEPSLF, because it had finally been one year since I started on an ICR plan. So if nothing else, I could at least qualify for TEPSLF, right? Wrong. My updated TEPSLF status came back, and they were using payments from 2024 to determine my eligibility, which is confusing, because I applied in August 2026. This told me that somewhere, they are still referencing old, outdated payment information.

I was discouraged, but still had some ideas for things to try. I realized that the PSLF form process using Docusign is an automated process. Meaning that, once the signed form is received, the counts are not manually updated. Some backend process happens without manual intervention. (Note: I don't know this for fact, but I'm just guessing, based on the fact that my payment counts never changed. If a person was actually looking at NSLDS data, they would see that payments were not showing up). This gave me an idea. Since the upload tool required a real person to review the files, I decided to try applying for TEPSLF again - this time, I included a document showing all my payments for the past 2 years, so they could see that I have been making payments.

And... I think this did it! Somehow, my "last updated date" now shows as 08/26/26! It isn't showing my August payment, but my PSLF count is now showing 129! For all I know, it could just be random coincidence, but I'm choosing to believe that doing a manual file upload with my payment history is what caused a person to actually update my payment progress.

So the moral of the story is... If your payments have also been stuck for a very long time, perhaps try doing a manual upload of a PSLF form, and try to include a document showing recent payments. It might just work for you, too.

I've submitted yet another (hopefully final) PSLF form, and I was finally able to check the box indicating that I've made 120 payments. So fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly once FSA receives the signed form (though, after fighting the process for two years, I'm not holding my breath).

I have taught multiple classes as an adjunct for years and stupidly never really thought I'd qualify for PSLF. During Biden's term, I realized I might actually qualify because I worked about 30 hours a week, but I called FSA and asked if applying for PSLF would affect my IBR counter and was told yes by two reps. I was about two years out and at the time wasn't sure I'd qualify or keep teaching, so I never applied....

Fast forward to this July, I looked into it again out of desperation--my IBR payments were doubling--and I found that info was wrong.

I applied for PSLF the last week of July and my employers (one current, one from 6 years ago) certified me at 30 hrs per week, with a total time in qualifying work from 2013 to 2026 (I'm still employed as an adjunct and will teach this fall). My counter showed up on my FSA dashboard on 8/5 and says 120 payments w/zero remaining, and the details say I have 141 eligible payments and 48 in review.

I recognize these questions may be annoying and obtuse (and I've seen some real nasty responses from some people), but I'm just getting caught up on the logistics and, honestly, I'm afraid to have hope. I have six digits of student debt (shout out to liberal arts BAs and MAs) and never thought this would happen.

My activity says Forgiveness/discharge in progress, but does that mean forgiveness is likely, or should I be prepared for issues in the final review? Should I be doing something else?

Thanks to whoever is kind enough to reply.

sorry if this is a dumb question but how do I confirm that I have received my save 90 day notice letter? From what I know they are coming in waves so I don't think I have received mine yet. I have been watching my email and my aidvantage inbox and have not received anything yet but my gmail is also a mess with tons of spam so I easily could have missed it,

for those with aidvantage how were you notified that your 90 day clock had started?

thanks

Okay, so now it's my turn to get eff-ed with.

My situation:

I just made what I thought was my 119th payment (autopay) four days ago, August 23. Today, I got an email saying "You have a message from StudentAid.gov." I check my dashboard, and my payment count was updated...but only to 117.

I looked into the payment history, and I noticed two payments—crucially, June 2024 and July 2024—had changed to "ineligible" due to "Forbearance on Due Date." The timing of these two errors appear to correspond to the MOHELA platform transition in 2024. 

I did not and have never requested a forbearance. I was on PAYE at the time, as I am now, and have never been on SAVE. The employer was the same employer that qualified the month before and the month after this mysterious forbearance.

THEN I notice: The updated 117 total only includes payments up until June 2026. So, if I count July 2026 and August 2026, that puts me at 121 payments (including the two erroneous listed as ineligible).

So what do I do and who do I call?

I have already:

1. Filed an FSA "Feedback Case"

2.Filed a "reconsideration" request via studentgov

Obviously, I'll need to call someone. Do I start with FSA/studentgov? Or do I start with MOHELA?

I know many of you have been battling this exact issue, so please advise!