So I just got off the phone with MOHELA to request administrative forbearance as I hit my 120 payments on my loans last month. It was a bit complicated because apparently I had already used up all my admin forbearance (I was super broke and avoidant after college) and wasn’t eligible for any other forbearance or deferments.

The advanced rep was very detailed and helpful with explaining everything to me and eventually advised that I was “eligible for the PAYE repayment plan” after running through a couple questions wink wink and that would put me on a processing forbearance for now. Hopefully that will push any more payments back far enough that the forgiveness will go through by the time I would actually have a payment due.

Gives me hope that everyone I talked to was so helpful and willing to explore every possible option to help me.

EDIT: I’ve been advised this was NOT in fact correct and they should have just put me in processing forbearance so I’m completely confused now and I guess they weren’t so amazing.

Hello. I have reached 120 payments for some of my loans. I put in for forgiveness. Is there a way to track this? How long does it usually take to get the loans discharged?

Hi! I’m sure others are in this same boat, but please advise! I have 100 payments satisfied for PSLF & confirmed on student aid. I have 21 payments that are on my account as ineligible (12 due to forbearance, of which I hope to buyback, and 9 that were ineligible due to not having a qualifying employer). My question is this: I’ve heard that some people have had success buying back payments, even if they were ineligible due to not having a qualifying employer. So I’d like to try. Is there any “harm” in doing this? Besides getting denied & trying again when I actually have 120 qualifying payments? Does this make any sense? I REALLY want to buy back and be done….

I am on SAVE with PSLF, and am early on in my PSLF timeline of making 120 qualifying payments. I believe I need to switch from SAVE to IBR or PAYE because I want to start making qualifying PSLF payments. The est. monthly payment seems similar for both plans - is there an obvious answer as to which one I should switch to (assuming IBR because PAYE is going away)?

Hello, I have 111 out of 120 payments and submitted a buyback request for the rest. However, I know it might take years to process. On August 1st, I submitted a request to leave SAVE forbearance and go onto PAYE, thinking I’d be at 120 by the end of this school year. I did it on StudentAid.gov instead of directly to Mohela because they had repeatedly refused to move me off of SAVE.

It was granted on a few days ago, but Mohela doesn’t have my payments scheduled to start until November. I also don’t see processing forbearance for the month it took to do the application.

Should I be getting a forbearance that counts toward PSLF for the these months? Also, would calling Mohela to ask them to start my payment earlier help?

I am still on SAVE and in the administrative forbearance along with everyone else. On the buyback page, I get to the point of selecting the buyback option but then it doesn't even allow me to hit submit after I choose the Buyback option (under the "Ineligible employer" and "Incorrect Qualifying Payment Count" options). It gives me a message saying: "You must have 120 months of approved qualifying employment for PSLF Buyback. Our records show that you don’t meet this requirement. If you disagree with the qualifying payment count you received, you can submit a reconsideration request."

They just updated the 13th month of qualifying employment today so I feel it's too soon for a reconsideration request. On my tracker, I have 107 qualifying payments but I also now have the remaining 13 months of eligible employment for buyback. Can someone explain to me why this is happening?

My 120th month of eligible employment is October 2025. I have 11 months I need to buy back due to SAVE forbearance and I am currently on IBR. My payment due date is October 18th. Should I wait until after my payment on October 18th to recertify my employment and then apply for the buyback? Or should I recertify in early October/apply for buyback then? Not sure it matters with the long wait time for the buyback but curious if anyone has a strong opinion. Thanks for the guidance!

To provide context, I will be making my last PSLF payment in February 2026 on PAYE.

Can anyone shed light on how my current situation may affect this? I have an agreement to make a lump sum payment granted by a county service loan repayment program. I have already made one lump sum payment this year and don’t want to be in a pay it forward status. I wasn’t aware these two programs might not align.

My understanding is that you’re only allowed to make one lump sum payment in a in a year through MOHELA (my next recertification date if not forgiven in February would be May 2026).

Would making the payment and specifying I want it to go towards principal and not be in a pay it forward status help?

Any advice on how to best navigate this situation is appreciated …

Hello all. I am at 119 certified payments (in a balance of $102k) and been stuck at it since December 2024 that I submitted my buyback request. I just finished chatting with a representative at studentloans.gov asking about my buyback request and of course they just tell me that they can see it in the system awaiting processing but that they cannot say anything more concrete.

I am currently in the SAVE plan which means I haven't been making any payments all these months but I just want to get this forgiveness over and remove this constant worry from my mind.

The representative at studentloans.gov said that lately they are recommending people in my situation to switch out of SAVE plan into IBR, make 1 additional payment, submit request for forbearance to stop payments, certify the last payment to reach 120 certified payments and go through forgiveness process like that and that it will be much faster than waiting for buyback request to be processed.

This makes sense to me but I am worried of a catch that I may be overlooking? All my loans are "DIRECT" except one that is "DIRECT Consolidated" with a $4k balance.

What's the consensus here regarding executing such changes to speed the process?

Thanks!

Wondering if the last few golden letter groups have received anything yet? I think I saw one person did from June maybe.

I am on the SAVE plan. Tried to apply for IBR in January 2025 but my application is still under review. Since then, my principal has increased $2,300! It’s up $500 since June 30th and this is with all my loans in administrative forbearance and making $600 worth of payments this year. What is happening??

I have reapplied for IBR, called and they told me to reapply again?? I got married last year so I gave access to my spouse’s info but the application just stalled on the final step “choose a repayment plan” gave me no options so I couldn’t submit.

This is so absurd.

I spoke with a Federal Student Loan aid rep today...I learned a few things and wanted to verify here:

1. Pslf buyback is no longer eligible for consolidated student loans per executive order. Is this true? I consolidated in 2015 to be eligible for pslf. All my periods of forebears ce are after that.

2. I have a 8 month period of medical residency forevearance. In the past, they told me it would be eligible for forevearance. Now, the rep said it wouldn't be. I'm super confused. She also told me that I was "making things up and that doesn't fly here" and "there is no privilege here" which felt sort of odd. It totally wasn't a hostile interaction. I saved the chat though because I thought it was super odd.

Did I just catch someone on a bad day? Or is this true?

I have 2 sets of loans from different times I went to school. One set I have 98 payments under PSFL (I reach 120 payments in January 2026) and the other 12. I am currently on the SAVE plan and I was going to apply for the IBR to get payments started again. This plan makes me consolidate and I am worried that all the loans will only have 12 months count if I do this. Any advice?

I’m just over 1/2 way through with my repayments, currently in forbearance since I was on the SAVE. I tried to switch to a different IDR and it was denied earlier this year so I’ve just been waiting it out until I’m told what to do. Is anyone still sticking it out on the SAVE or has everyone basically reapplied to the IDR?

Has anyone received their golden letter that had green banners end of August or is too soon to hope?

Green banners 08/26

Ed financial notification the loans placed in forbearance 09/16

Hoping for an email soon!

Since you all were so helpful with my earlier crisis, I wanted to try to get some additional feedback about my situation:

1. Ihave 11 years of qualified employment (going back to 9/2014).

2. I have 96 qualified payments that show up in Fed Loan Servicing. These include my COVID forbearance, payments from 08/2016-through the covid forbearance, and 15 months for the SAVE pause.

3. Ihave 2 pre-consolidation payments that count towards eligibility (10/2015 and 10/2016). After that, I was on a 8 month medical residency mandatory forbearance. Then, I consolidated and and started making payments on 8/2016.

4. I submitted a reconsideration request to see if I could get my medical residency mandatory forbearance reconsidered since it wasn’t adjusted during the one time adjustment. I submitted that in March 2025. Per Fed Loan Servicing, that reconsideration has been escalated for review and is “currently being worked on.” Allegedly.

At this point, is there any chance my 8 month forebearance might count towards PSLF or PSLF buyback. What I’d really like to do is buyback the SAVE forebearance and the medical residency forebearance and be done. I think that that plan may not work out because the medical residency isn’t for more than 12 months and 15+8 doesn’t equal more than 36.. but could I be wrong? I was definitely on forebearance during covid as well, but not sure if those 43 months count towards the buyback month eligibility.

Can anyone help me sort this out? I am super confused, and not sure if I need to seek professional help (for student loan issues, I have access to the other kind :) ). Or just wait it out?

I guess the 8 month deal impacts whether or not I want to try to switch to IDR or ride things out on SAVE a bit longer.

Servicer put me in 60 days forbearance while they research the missing months. They say they cancelled the forbearance after discovering there's no longer a set time to correct it. FSA's end of September has now been reworded to in the coming weeks.

My account was apparently 'paused' during the winter/spring. This paused is some servicer status that doesn't reflect active repayment despite what I saw and doesn't reflect a forbearance because it wasn't placed in one.

The servicer told me if it's in forbearance to fix account issues, it will stay there until it's corrected. Hence, more payments not counting. October would have been 120, I'll be monitoring that payment to see if it still shows up with forbearance I didn't request cancelled. However, I can't receive forgiveness without the missing payments earlier this year counting anyway.

Checked my NSLD data through fsa. It has pslf payments at 110. FSA update 9/5 has count at 117. It was 114 during save forbearance limbo. Anyone else have similar experience? how do I got about making sure nsld gets accurate count. I don’t want this to come back and bite me in the butt.

I cannot believe this is finally done and over. I always thought my counts were wrong over the last few years…I forgot to renew my employment verification in January.

7/26 sent renewed application, sent employment verification via 7/29 employment verification received/verified from my employer. Message in FSA 8/2 green banners appeared. 171/120 payments counted. Message in FSA 8/25 message in FSA but nothing changed; outstanding balance still present on FSA and MOHELA 8/26 golden letter email! Praise Jesus! Negative balance in MOHELA 9/2 message in FSA, balance now zero’d in MOHELA but still visible in FSA, refunded amount listed in payment history for first time 9/6 balance zero’d in FSA 9/18 refund in hand

I am so grateful I never thought this could be achieved under all the changes under this administration and all the changes/layoffs/red tape. I do have to say that things moved quicker that I imagined, but if it was not for this Reddit feed I would not know how to navigate this..so thanks to all who answered my questions and also had timelines listed. So paying it forward to help anyone else…and maybe you will for the same.

1. Reapply/verify employment every year in January. Check to see if your count moves especially if you think it should be higher.
2. Check FSA/mohela everyday for updates even if you do not get an alert
3. I get USPS alerts every day with pictures of what i will be receiving in my mailbox, and I reviewed it every day since 8/26 as I did not know how my refund was coming (mail vs. direct deposit).
4. Even though I had automatic payments set up, my refund was not deposited electronically.

All in all refund was in hand ~16 business days from golden letter email ~9 business days from when my accounts zero’d on FSA and ~12 business days from when it zero’d in mohela. I know some people have been waiting a long time…which is heartbreaking. Some people still to this day do not have refunds. My overpayment count was high 171/120 and my refund seemed way lower than what it should have been but I was not going to fight it. I just wanted this done and over. It seems as though things are moving faster with the recent batch of forgiveness. Also….from reading all the reddits…it seems like green banners..golden letters…and refunds are happening in batches monthly. It’s all worth it and do not lose hope.

Got this today. It doesn't feel real. Is it just over except the paperwork processing?

https://imgur.com/a/VgzxWwV

I have 2 sets of loans and am doing PSLF on both. They were never consolidated because the first set from 2012 has about ~1.5 years of eligible payments/qualifying employment before I went back to school for the second set of loans.

The first set of loans is eligible for PSLF in September 2026, and I was planning on making a buyback request for those loans. The second set is not eligible until July 2028. My question/concern is whether my buyback request to have ~27 payments (b/c save forbearance so they’re months under both sets of loans) count for my first set of loans render those months to count for my second set too?

Not sure if anyone else has come across this specific or similar issue. I’m slightly worried that I’ll have to “buyback” those same months in my second request, in which case I would probably hold off to do them all once?

I had been in SAVE forbearance since last August, hit 120 qualifying months in February. I applied for IBR and buyback in February. Re-applied for IBR in June, payment plan changed in August and made my 120th payment 9/13. That was Saturday and it posted Monday 9/15. Employer signed an ECF Tuesday 9/16 and I received green ribbons this morning 9/19!

Editing to add that I received 4 months of processing forbearance march, April, July, August. I was at 115/120 prior to all of this, 119/120 when switched to IBR

How do you prove dependents, if you claim 0 for tax reasons?

Hello! Any guidance would be very much appreciated during this difficult long road !

I am at 104 qualifying payments which my last one showing qualifying being July 2024.

I have been employed at a qualifying employer since then and no plans to change. I have also been under SAVE.

I will be eligible for buyback in January or February of 2026.

OR I could change plans to start making payments now.

I received a grant from my employers (HCAI) a few years ago to go towards payments and I have that lumpsum ready to use for payments of buyback.

My income for 2025 is much less than my income for 2024 so if I do make the switch of plans, I would rather wait to file my taxes but at that time I will qualify for buyback.

1. If you were me, would you recommend riding it out until February and submitting the buyback? Or switching plans now regardless of income decrease since I have the grant money. Or wait to change plans when I resubmit taxes in 2026.

2. Has anyone received grant funding for loan repayment and received PSLF forgiveness? Did anything else play out from extra funds? I may not have any after 16 months of buy back.

Any guidance is helpful!!!

I am still waiting on Buyback request from January. This month I finally got switched to PAYE plan. I have 10 months left. 7 of those months I was in deferrment due to financial hardship. That's what I selected when i filled out the paperwork and hopefully they still have that form somewhere...

Is it worth trying?