To avoid going from $0 to a $500/mo student loan payment starting next month, I want to enroll in school part-time. I'm a parent of 2 and work full-time so it has to be easy. The whole point is to avoid payments that aren't touching my interest payment anyway and I'm taking them to the grave. I'm not burning $500/mo. Can't afford to.

Has anyone done the research on which schools have affordable online programs and what classes would be easy? Who else is doing this?

Okay, here’s my take… because this is WILD.

I’m in the same boat as a lot of you. I took out student loans, paid off most of my undergrad debt, and then stupidly bought into the whole corporate marketing narrative that getting a master’s degree would help me stand out and eventually land that Director/VP role I thought I wanted 10 years ago.

So, in 2016, I took out a SHIT TON more loans to get my master’s degree. Then, in 2018, I got laid off from the absolute hellhole of a job I was working. My first layoff in corporate America.

Fast-forward to today, and I’m on job number who-even-knows, having weathered FOUR MORE layoffs since getting that degree. I’ve had stretches of unemployment ranging from 4 to 12 months. I’ve worked my ass off, kept trying to move forward, and somehow ended up owing more in student loans than I make in an entire year.

I make a low six-figure salary, which I know is a privilege in many ways. But as an overeducated woman trying to build a career in corporate America, raise two kids, and keep a roof over our heads, that money does not go nearly as far as people seem to think it does.

$2,000 a month for full-time preschool? Real.
Living in New York with some of the highest property taxes in the country? Real.
Going through five layoffs and months of unemployment? Real.
Owing more in student loans than I make in a year? VERY real.

But somehow, the government thinks I can afford $822 A MONTH in student loan payments?!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

I called to see what my options were. The lowest payment they could get me to was $580 a month, which, frankly, is a lot better than $822. But even that is a massive expense when you’re already juggling childcare, a mortgage, and the general cost of existing.

And here’s the advice I was given: take another 12 months of forbearance and voluntarily make payments of $400–$500 a month during that time, even though I’m not required to make payments. Basically, cross my fingers, hope the political landscape changes, and pray that something gets figured out before I have to start making these payments again.

Meanwhile, my company seems to be gearing up for what feels like another round of layoffs. So there’s a very real possibility that my income could look completely different in the next year.

How is this the system we’ve created?

We encouraged people to get educated, told us advanced degrees would open doors, and sold us the idea that more education meant more opportunity and financial stability. Meanwhile, corporate America has been a revolving door of layoffs, and now we’re expected to shoulder debt payments calculated as if our financial lives are stable, predictable, and completely unaffected by the cost of raising a family.

I’m not saying I shouldn’t have to repay what I borrowed. I made those decisions, and I understand that.

But there is a massive difference between being responsible for your debt and being expected to pay an amount that genuinely does not fit into your financial reality.

How the hell are people supposed to make this work?

Seriously, how are the rest of you navigating this? Because being told to just wait another year and hope things improve is not exactly a financial plan.

I just made my final student loan payment today! I finally got my shit together, figured out how to automate payments, and I managed to complete my goal 2.5 months early. When I first started, I had an estimated payoff date in July 2027. I made it my goal to be done before 2027 because I wanted to start the new year almost debt free (still have a credit card and car loan). I did get my 90 day notice in August and that pushed me even harder because I did NOT want to go thru the whole rigamarole of trying to change plans so close to being done.

I know I won't get the official notice from Nelnet for another month (that's how long it takes for them to send it). So no instant gratification here, but oh well.

To those of you currently making payments, you're doing great and there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

To those who currently can't afford to make payments, I hope you are still surviving anyway and am rooting for you. Pray legislation gets their shit together and figures out how to let people live.

Peace out ✌🏼

I got my "This is your FINAL NOTICE" pick a new plan in 30 days from Nelnet on 9/30 just checked my e-mail and I have a "Choose a New Repayment Plan Within 90 Days" e-mail from them today. No one really knows what tf is going on huh.

i don’t know how i’m going to pay for this semester.
i am an undergraduate student and am projected to graduate december 2026. i currently have to pay $20,000 for my student tuition by next month and i have no idea how or where to get that money from.
i pay for majority of my life; rent, groceries, student loans/ tuition. i don’t receive help from family members in regards of my loans or tuition and that’s all taken out under my name and my co-signers name. i’ve asked for more assistance from loan borrowers and have been denied. i’m currently sitting in $100k of student debt and feel so helpless, scared and lost. if anyone has any recommendations on what i can do or what has helped them, please help me out. thank you <3

RAP payment is $30 less a month than PAYE however I don’t think either payment covers my interest. If I understand correctly the RAP payment would forgive unpaid interest and give me a $50 credit towards principle but I could have that wrong. PAYE is $32 more a month and I’d have to see exactly how much more the interest is and if I can cover it and a little more. RAP is probably the better option but I’d rather honestly pay more until 2028 because f**k the Republicans and their RAP plan, that’s why.

Just got the 90 day notice to change plans today 10/21/26. That is all... Kinda thought they forgot about me.

Backstory: I didn’t want to go to college. My dad is an immigrant and mom grew up poor, they decided I needed to go. I said well if I go I wanna go somewhere cool. So I did. Out of state and expensive. And I knew nothing about finance. I was a dumb 17 year old. My mom is also not very financially literate and we took out the loans. She cosigned. I went to school for 5 years, got a useless degree, and now I’m a chronically ill stay at home mom with an active duty military husband.

I have approximately $200,000 in private Sallie Mae student loans, with my mother as a co-signer. My payments are thousands per month, and I expect to default on October 31.

My household income is around $3,300 per month, I currently cannot work, and my mother is also struggling financially. We are both willing to explore bankruptcy and whether the loans could be discharged. But I genuinely don’t know what to do.

Me and my mom live in different states. She consulted with a lawyer back home and he said to let them default, and if (and when, because I know they will) they sue us, we can mediate and come to a settlement.

How true is that? That almost seems too good to be true and too easy. My loans default in 12 days. I feel like I’m drowning, and honestly if I didn’t have my son I might’ve just KMS. The stress from this has completely ruined my life.

If anyone has been in a similar situation please please share what happened and worked for you. Thank you. ALSO, you don’t need to tell me how much of an idiot I am (and my mom is) for getting in this situation. Like I said, I was a financially illiterate, dumb 17-22 year old from poor parents, and yes, it was idiotic. I am painfully aware

I have a credit balance due to an over payment towards a tuition payment plan and I’m wondering if the school is going to refund me or Nelnet directly. Has anyone else been through this process?

I turned in my fafsa late and owe ~ $7,600 for this semester. my credit score is ~660 and my parents already said they won’t co-sign for any loans. is there any way for me to get loans or am i screwed?

hello ill keep this short and sweet.

I 24f am 256 days late on my payment. I know. dont rub my face in it pls.

I called to set up a payment plan and went to pay the first payment and i remembered my card runs as a credit card because I dont bank at a brick and mortar bank.

so I asked, because they've let me do it before, and she said no because ive had "too many bad checks."

I asked her what to do as I dont have a true "debit" card and she said to "use someone else's card and pay them."

they want to do this for the next 15 months.

I have the money in my account but they won't take it from me? what do i do?

Mohela just denied my IDR application to move out of SAVE, because I am not in repayment… but I can’t enter repayment until I am in a new plan (which is why I submitted an IDR application) 🤦‍♂️.
Did I forget to click a button somewhere? I thought my IDR application was me signaling my intention to enter repayment. Please tell me it is a simple step I missed somewhere on studentloan.gov. I really hate calling these people.

Took them long enough 😹 Works out pretty well since I want to switch before taxes are due next year (income increased quite a bit this year). Fun times.

Anywho keep an eye out, fellow “forgotten” Nelneters.

Today, I received the 90 day notice to choose a new plan. When I use the repayment calculator, it mentions a "discharge amount" under IBR and says "Under some IDR plans, this remaining amount may be discharged (cancelled) after you've made all qualifying payments." The end of term date is listed as June 2038.

Does this mean any remaining balance will be discharged if I make all payments by June 2038? I'm not a public employee and I received my first loan somewhere around August 2014.

I am 25 and a recently graduated from school. Grace period ends in about a month.

I have 72k in federal loans at 6% on average.

I have about 50k in cash. Plus a decent savings/emergency fund seperate from the 50k

Partner and I will make about 125k a year combined. I am in public sector and will make 50k of that. In all likelihood will remain in an eligible job long term.

Debating on the idea of paying 50k off the loans at once. Or pursuing pslf and keeping the 50k for investments, general savings or even a down payment for a house in the future. I hear that pslf isn’t always the easiest process and certainly is a commitment. Wondering what others thoughts on the situation are.

I am a longtime student loan holder currently in the SAVE freeze and deciding what my next step should be.

I have roughly 23 years of qualifying payments (or so I thought) so I am quite close to the 25 year forgiveness (some grad school loans). Because of this the IBR plan would make the most sense for me.

I had been on an extended fixed plan for a very long time. Made my monthly payment every month. Stayed on this through most of the pandemic. I eventually consolidated and switched to SAVE and therefore should qualify for the one time payment adjustment.

However, I am running into a problem. When I check the back door api payment counter it shows the following:

271 qualifying payments for ICR
271 qualifying payments for PAYE (but not eligible)

273 qualifying payments for SAVE (dead)
273 qualifying payments for RAP

0 qualifying payments for IBR????

Can anyone explain why none of my previous payments qualified for IBR? From what I understand the one time adjustment should have made my past payments qualifying for all IDR plans.

Is IBR exempt from this? Or are my 0 qualifying payments toward IBR a mistake.

I am going to have to switch plans in a month and I would love to be able to make an educated decision based on real data.

Any insight here would be appreciated.

Currently: 26 years old, $260k student loan debt. All grad plus loans, $50k of these loans are around 7-8% interest and the rest are around 5%.

Annual salary is $200k. Currently have no rent payments or major living expenses at the moment. I have about $70,000 in savings from working 1 year.

My question is: should I be throwing all of the money at the loans and pay off quickly, or is it smarter to pay them down over time and put the money towards actual life goals such as a house? Or best to go somewhere in between over the course of 10 years. Do not want to lose my financial flexibility over the years but I am luckily in a unique position where I could technically pay down quickly.

Thank you in advance for your consideration and feedback for this post. DMs are open as well.

I filled out my FAFSA for 2026-2027 because I'm applying to graduate programs. One of them contacted me today to say that one of my student loans was discharged due to total and permanent disability. Which was odd, to say the least, since I'm not disabled and paid all of my student loans (over the course of 20+ years).

Turrrns out, this was referring to the Parent PLUS loan my parents took out on my behalf. The financial aid office at this university told me the easiest way to fix this was to get my parents to get documentation from the loan servicer showing that the discharge was for the PLUS loan.

Except I haven't spoken to my parents for over a decade. And I don't want to re-establish contact with these people. Does anyone know if there is a way to get this documentation without having to go through my parents?

I was unemployed for about 2 or 3 months I have a $300 monthly payment that starts at 14th of November. I absolutely have no money how am I able to afford this new payment plan and what are my options? My new role is 27 dollars an hour.

I moved from the SAVE plan to RAP plan. But now everything seems impossible, how is anyone supposed to sustain this for longer than a couple of months??? I don't even make much an hour!

Hoping someone can help. I got the 90 day email today from Nelnet to switch off Save plan. I was expecting it but choosing RAP which will be 10% max or Old IBR which is 15% for me is the difficult part. I am 54 make around 85k yearly. These loans total 150k roughly and I borrowed 45k. Its my fault. What I need help with is trying to figure out if I can trust the count on the number of payments toward forgiveness. I had to download xml files and upload them to AI just to figure it out. I can see in Fed Aid my total paid if I choose old IBR equates to the same 234 count. I am very worried about the 234 count total. I never made anywhere close to this many payments. So do I trust this count and hope they forgive my loan in 5 1/2 years at a much higher monthly payment and then deal with the tax bomb or just accept about 10% of my income will always go to student loans. I don't trust them and if they dispute the count (they wont clearly provide) trying to sort this out would be extremely difficult and time consuming. Can someone share some insight or advice. RAP will probably be around 575$ monthly vs. almost 800$ on old IBR. I did not log in yet and do formal calculations and want to wait until after the holidays.

Edit for an important detail: I was in default for a large part of the earlier life of these loans and did not begin making regular payments until around 2015. That is one reason the 234 qualifying-payment count worries me so much. The 234 number was not just an AI estimate. I downloaded my federal StudentAid data/XML and the IDR forgiveness field appears to show 234 qualifying payments. The repayment information on StudentAid.gov also seems consistent with having roughly 66 payments remaining under Old IBR. What I am trying to understand is whether the IDR account adjustment could legitimately have credited enough older repayment/deferment/forbearance periods to get me to 234 despite the years I spent in default, and whether anyone has had an official IDR count like this later reduced or corrected. That is the part that would determine whether I am willing to take on roughly an $800/month Old IBR payment for 5½ years instead of choosing RAP at roughly $575/month.

It is Wednesday, my dudes, and I am officially no longer in forbearance.

After a few posts here and a lot of (honestly too much) math for someone with a design degree, I have made a plan. I owe roughly $28,000 across 6 federal loans and make ~$65,000 /yr GROSS. In NJ so take home is a ton less.

I chose the graduated repayment plan as payments were lowest to start with this. Yes, lower than IBR / RAP. It officially comes to $183 a month which still sucks but is a lot better than RAP's estimated $265. Now I know every two years it will increase, but my salary has steadily increased yearly historically too. I also very much enjoy the though of being done in 10 years.

My loans have different interest rates, the highest being ~6% and lowest a little under ~4%. They average out to ~4.75% (I did not consolidate). I have just signed up for autopay to bring down my interest by 1%, too, so that should help.

Now, as stated, I went and got a design degree. I suck at math and have a very specific question that I need someone smarter than me to answer. I can put an extra $100 a month towards loans AFTER my minimum is covered but, because I don't understand how interest is calculated one way or another, am not sure what to do with that money.

The question: Is it better to...

Make additional monthly $100 principle-only payments starting with the lowest balance loan first and snowball-method them away a little at a time,

OR

Put $100 in a high-yield savings each month and make a lump-sum payment years down the line when the savings has enough to cover the remaining balance?

Or is there an additional third option that would be better but I don't know it because I spent $28k on Shapes and Colors 101? I thought about paying the highest interest loan first but it's more than I can reasonably cover upfront and would take years of savings to have that lump-sum prepared.

Thanks!

Does anyone recommend the term based plan for student loan payment instead of any of the other income based plans they have. The term based plan starts with the lowest payment but the payments increase every two years. I do not qualify for the Paye plan and the other plans have much higher monthly payments that I cannot afford so the term based plan offer the lowest payments but I did not find much information online about it. Thank you

When looking into switching from SAVE to IBR I got prompted by a screen asking if I want to continue forbearance or end it and I didn't understand why I was being asked doesn't switching to IBR automatically end forbrearance why do they give you that pop up choice?