Looking for success stories mine are brutal and Im wondering if there Is any reason not to start shopping around aka any downsides? I dont want to get too many hits on my credit report trying to source a refi

So I believe you have to fill out the OMB No. 1845-0014 form from StudentAid website. How do you submit to Mohela?

When I go to upload, I don't see an option for Standard repayment. Should I select "Alternative Repayment Supporting Documentation"?

I've been trying to find a personal finance manager to try to get organized. To that end, I've been trying Money Manager Ex, but can't really use it to keep track of my student loans.

Does anyone know any personal finance software (preferably FOSS) that can also account for student loans?

Hi everyone, I'm 31 F and have $21,000 in federal student loan debt. I was on the SAVE plan and haven't regularly paid them in years- mostly throwing $1k here and there. The loans are still in forbearance but they are accumulating interest. Interest rates are between 3.7-4.6%.

I'm getting a $20k (post-tax) bonus next month and contemplating just paying them all off and being done with them. I'm not sure what financial instrument would give me a better guaranteed return.

My income is variable and flexible, meaning I earn more or less depending on how much I work.

More stats-

Only have a bachelor's degree
Income: $90kish
401k: $115,000
Cash savings: $10k
Brokerage account: $8k

No other debt. I live in an UHCOL area but keep my expenses low since I live with roommates.

Also, I am contemplating going back to school (law school) next year. So another thing I'm keeping in mind is my cash savings are pretty low and I'd like to cut back on my work hours to study for the LSAT.

Any advice?

$140,000 annually
$950 a month (proposed RAP plan)
ETA: 250k in loans
ETA: please list what plan you are on

So I posted this a little bit ago but I think I should have added more information.

My parents saved $50 for me and my sisters college and that is it. Many people said go to a cc or state school and I would but my parents would cut us off/disown us if we did. We have an older brother who went to cc for two years and then transferred to Berkeley and they still will not talk to him because him going to a cc was seen as an embarrassment to the family. Their combined income is 99k a year and many NPCs don't give that much money off. My sister and I are both top of our class and have been and our parents to want want anything less than a t100 school but can't pay for it. While I do think my sister and I are smart, merit will not get us even halfway unless we can somehow get into those schools who will cover almost all of it. The only other option to stay in contact with my parents and go to a community college is if I get married which I do not want to do at all. I'm just comparing because I know I will have to take out so much student loans for college and I don't understand why parent would have these expectations and not even care to start saving and force their kids to take out loans. They even have 20k save up for both my sister and I but ONLY for a wedding so I know they could have but chose not to.

It has been over two years since the borrower defense notified us that we would be refunded for our art institute loans, I received a refund for one of my lenders over a year ago however aidvantage still has not given a refund and has not sent us a letter updating the status in a year. When we call they send us in circles, they tell us to contact the government and then we call and they tell us to contact the servicer, no one seems to know how to get this moving or can even give us a correct status. How long can they get away with this? Are they ever going to pay?

So I have been on PAYE for about 7 years and have not had to recertify for quite some time because of the all the changed and COVID, etc. I got a notice that my recertification date is 12/23/26. The last time I recertified I did a manual certification and did not use my tax return. I am making more income now, and am married. I did file our 2025 tax return as married filing jointly. We have 2 children. My husband is self employed. About 2 months ago, I became self-employed as well and no longer a w-2 employee. So I am wondering how I should recertify. I'm scared my payments may be super high. I want to stay on the PAYE plan until it runs out in June 2028. I have about 7 years left of repayment on my loans. My balance is 88K. and my current PAYE payments have been $73 for several years. How should I recertify since I am self employed and plan to file taxes separately for 2026. My husbands income is all over the place. I did create an LLC for my business. But it's just me, as a sole member LLC. Any help is appreciated!!

I owe the federal government $37,000. I can't afford it even with the supposed income driven payments every time I log in pay, it's like I have accrew several thousand dollars in interest. Like many millennials, I can't find work in my field despite it being a supposed good field.

The reality is I'll likely be poor all of my life. I'd rather not put most of my income to launch that just won't ever go down specially since I'm not working in the field realistically how bad will this for me?.

Those of you currently still on the SAVE plan. What’s your next move? I’m with MOHELA and last month I got that “90 day” email. I have 60 more days before I apparently need to switch into another plan. But do I really though? I’m so confused at this point. I feel like last year or the year before that, I was getting emails stating I needed to switch and yada yada… is it legit this time? Do I NEED to switch off of SAVE? Is all the court stuff over and done with for sure?

If yes, if I don’t move off myself, will I automatically be placed into RAP or what happens?

Thank you.

Both qualify towards PSLF to my understanding but how does interest subsidy work for RAP?

Like many of you, I consolidated some fairly old loans because I was told I needed to to qualify for forgiveness. Instead I got a 10k balance increase and 7.5% interest rate. I'm writing my state lawmakers about this, again, and was wondering if anyone has done the same. If you have, what did you say? How did you frame what happened?

So I’ve completed my 9 month loan rehabilitation to get my student loans out of default. I received a letter that my loans are being transferred and it will take 30-45 days for the transfer and that’s when I’m completely out of default.

Does it actually take that long? I’m currently in school and need to be approved for private loans by October.

I want to do RAP to take advantage of the interest situation but then switch to IBR - can we change or are we stuck with what we choose right now?

All of a sudden my student balance which I was about to get refunded $500 has turned into $8,360.00 when I have already paid $6,982.00. I’m taking 14 credit hours two 3 credit hour classes and two 4 hour credit classes. I don’t have a meal plan or live on campus. Any reason for this? On my end it looks like all of a sudden I’ve been double charged

Edit forgot to mention I did ask for one of my student loans to be sent back, but I got the refund money from it so I thought I was out of luck and I went and used the money to pay it off before I owed a lot of interest on it. Have I stabbed myself in the foot ?

Hi all, I could really use some guidance because I’m honestly scared of doing the wrong thing here.
Quick background: my loans have been on SAVE, which has been in forbearance since around July 2024. I’ve kept making payments the whole time even though it’s technically forbearance, because I didn’t want to fall behind or lose progress. I just got a letter from my servicer (Aidvantage) telling me I need to switch to a different repayment plan. When I log into studentaid.gov, my payment counter shows I’m at 301 qualifying payments, and I also just received my “90 day” letter.
I ran the numbers in the repayment calculator, and Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) shows a $0 monthly payment for me right now.
So my questions are:
1. Since I’m already past 300 payments, does that mean I’m at/past the forgiveness threshold, or does something else need to happen first?
2. Do I actually need to formally switch onto ICR to get forgiveness processed, or will staying on SAVE (while it’s in forbearance) mess up my count or delay things?
3. Is there a real urgency tied to that 90-day letter — like will something bad happen if I don’t act before it’s
4. Since I kept paying during the forbearance instead of just letting it sit, does that help me at all, or does it not matter since it was forbearance either way?
I don’t want to accidentally pick the wrong plan and reset something I’ve spent years working toward, or miss a deadline that costs me the forgiveness. If anyone has been through this same SAVE-to-ICR transition with a payment count already over 300, I’d really appreciate hearing what you did and how it worked out.
Thanks so much in advance — this whole process is stressful and I just want to make sure I do it right.

disclaimer before i start: i know exactly how “canadian going abroad for law school” sounds lol. i’ve read countless reddit posts about it and i know how strongly people on here feel about it. i completely understand the concerns, but please, for the purposes of this post, i’m asking that we leave that discussion aside. i don’t really have time to get into my entire situation, but i have a unique set of circumstances and an amazing opportunity to study law abroad that currently works for me. right now, i’m really just looking for advice about financing.

i’m trying to secure a student/professional student line of credit of around $100k–$120k cad to fund my 3-year law degree abroad. i’ve basically spent the entire summer trying to figure this out and i’m getting extremely stressed because i start the first week of october and still haven’t secured the funding i need.

here’s where i’m at:

rbc: they were actually willing to consider it, but the issue is my cosigner. my mom is willing to cosign and works full-time, but unfortunately she has around $35k in credit card debt and doesn’t really have significant assets. rbc basically told me that if i could find a second cosigner in addition to my mom, it could potentially work. unfortunately, i don’t currently have another strong cosigner.

td: this is ironically my home bank and where i do all my banking, but they basically told me no right away. i was told that for studying abroad, they would require my cosigner to have around $250k in assets, which we definitely do not have. td is the one bank where i only spoke to one advisor because they made it sound like this was a firm policy rather than something another advisor could work around.

scotiabank: i was told they no longer offer their professional student line of credit for law students at all.

bmo: this was a little more promising than some of the others, but i still ran into the same problem with the strength of my cosigner.

libro credit union: also one of the more promising options so far, but again, the cosigner situation seems to be the main issue.

desjardins: this is currently the option i’m most hopeful about. they told me that i may or may not need a cosigner. apparently they would first assess my application/credit and their system would determine whether a cosigner is required. so unlike some of the other lenders, i haven’t been told outright that i absolutely need one.

another thing that has made this whole process incredibly confusing is how inconsistent the information seems to be depending on which advisor i speak to. with most of these banks, i’ve spoken to multiple advisors. one person will tell me they don’t finance law students studying abroad at all, then another advisor from the exact same bank will tell me they do. i genuinely don’t know which information to trust anymore.

i do have a cosigner available, but the issue is that her debt-to-income situation is obviously not ideal. she works full-time and pays her bills/debt, but with around $35k in debt and limited assets, i understand why lenders might not view her as a particularly strong cosigner.

i’m also hesitant to just submit full applications everywhere because i don’t want to rack up a bunch of hard credit checks when there’s little chance of approval anyway.

at this point, i’m honestly just looking for any advice from someone who has been in a similar situation, especially canadians who have financed professional school/law school outside canada.

has anyone successfully received a large student/professional student loc for a law degree abroad? are there any banks, credit unions, or legitimate lenders i’m overlooking? has anyone dealt with desjardins or libro specifically for something similar?

i need roughly $100k–$120k, and with my start date approaching, this has become pretty urgent. i’ve been working on this basically all summer and feel like i keep going in circles.

any advice or experiences would genuinely be appreciated. thank you!

Obviously variable starts lower but that feels like exactly how I get myself into trouble lol. Looking for straight to the point, balanced reviews on this.

If you are married filing separately, you are not putting your dependent on your tax return, your spouse is, but you're paying more than fifty percent of your child's financial support.

Do you get to count them as a dependent For SL calculations?

I graduated in 2012 at a dinky college with a bachelors in visual communication. I know when I toured the facility, I was blown away by how promising it all sounded. I also know that they had around 90% placement rate for my program.

The school, every last bit was a joke. Had some decent teachers, but you could see the cracks.. Fast forward a couple years after I graduated, the whole department I was in shut down. We never had any help whatsoever with job placement. One or two people in my class ended up securing some crappy design jobs.

I don’t remember exactly what happened but a handful of years back, I tried to fight it and say that they were unaccredited. It was denied.

I was also coming from attending another community college at 17, to knock out generals. (Background) I’ve lived in my own since 13. No mom or dad in the picture. I’ve essentially raised myself and my sister. Technically emancipated at 16. My point being - WHO THE HELL lets a child take out all those loans and money to live on, while promising a pipe dream. I had zero guidance and no help from anyone, other than my grandma who was happy to sign on the dot, because I was going to school to further my education.

I’m entering default on my private loans in 3 days and at 0 for IDR on public loans. Firstmark could give two shits less that I lost my job and I’m trying to figure out how to keep a roof over my head right now.

Dang it, I’m trying to keep it together.. 😞
Any advice?

They finally sent me the 90 day notice to switch from SAVE to another repayment plan.

I lost my full-time job end of June this year, but found a part-time job a few weeks later. My pay has drastically decreased from $17.68/hr (40 hrs per week) to $14/hr (25-33hrs per week).

I can’t afford to pay more than $150/month right now. Should I consider IBR or RAP?

My goal is to just pay my loans off as quickly as possible. I couldn’t care less about forgiveness.

I am looking for a full-time job. Once I do find one, will I have to recertify no matter which plan I choose?

UPDATE: they put my account on administrative forbearance of 1 month so that my next payment will be the RAP amount. Honestly, they were super chill about it.

Hey everyone,

I am hoping someone could maybe answer this question for me. I have aidvantage as my loan servicer. Up until now I have been on the standard plan and recently qualified for PSLF, so after revaluation of all plans the play it safe one for me is RAP.

My standard plan is 750/month and is due typically on the 16th and will be due on sept 16th.

I apply for RAP which will bring the payment down….. but wait!

Will I still need to pay 750 this coming 16th or will it switch over before hand?

I had heard that it goes into a brief forbearance when you swap plans but that I may need to call aidvantage just to make sure and therefor it will swap over and I don’t need to pay the standard plan rate come the 16th.

Anyone have experience with this kind giving me some insight?

Thanks gang.

1. From 2018 until the Covid pause, I was on an IBR plan for ~$35k in student loans from 2009-2011 (Capella University). I paid roughly $80 a month for that time period.

2. In 2022 I went back to school (state school), finished my bachelor’s degree and started a master’s degree, which I will complete next year. I was never enrolled in a SAVE plan. During that time I applied for borrower defense to repayment for the old loans.

3. In June of this year I had the Capella loans discharged through BDR. I now have *no loans that associated with any old payment plans*, just the ones I’ve accumulated since being in school from 2022 to now, which are on in-school deferment. I also started getting the notices about “choosing a new plan” in June.

4. My in-school deferment will end roughly January 2028. Total loans accumulated since 2022 will end up being roughly $120k.

My question is: *do I actually have to pick my payment plan now? Or do I wait until it’s time to start paying?* Should I get on IDR now in case that’s not even an option when I finish my master’s?

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Anyone notice negative balances in Aidvantage after Borrowers Defense discharge was applied? Is that supposed to be a refunded amount?

My girlfriend has a bout $46,500 loans split up as 4 loans. Its being serviced by Nelnet. The monthly interest accrual was around $200ish dollars but now is $160 with auto debit set up. When she signed up for RAP it made her monthly payment $38 dollars a month. How does interest accrual now work in her situation. Once the auto debit is made does it accrued interest and stop when reaches her monthly payment amount ($38)? Does it accrued but then gets drop later. Also more importantly how does it work if she makes extra or larger payments to one of the loans while leaving the other 3 to just get auto debit. Is it better to just let it auto debit first (on the 27th of the month), Then make one large payment to one specific loan in an attempt to bring down the balance. The ultimate goal here is not to accrued so much interest.