(Ep. 158) What We’re Seeing in the Field: PSLF Waivers and Servicer Changes In Action

Welcome to another episode of the Student Loan Planner Podcast. Today, you are getting the mighty ladies of Student Loan Planner, Lauren and Megan. We're going to be talking to you today about the PSLF waiver, all the different servicer changes, and just, you know, what's new and exciting in the PSLF world. Megan, welcome. Hello. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this. I think we'll be able to tell you all about what's going on out there in the field from what we've been seeing. I know we've done an episode already on, like, the PSLF waiver itself, and we've talked about the servicer changes. Today, we thought would be a good opportunity for us to talk through, like, what we're actually seeing happening, like, with folks, what our readers and what our clients are telling us. And also, towards the end, we'll do some kind of rapid-fire question, like, Q&A kind of thing. So I'm looking forward to this. This will be fun. Yes, let's get the party started by talking a little bit about the public service loan forgiveness folks that were at FedLoans and have moved to MoHELA. I think you've seen this happen, actually, in real-life consults that you've done recently. Yeah, so, of course, we know that FedLoan announced that they were stepping down from loan servicing. And then a couple weeks ago, we found out that they were going to extend their contract another year. And so there's not as much of a rush as we thought anymore for folks moving from FedLoan to different companies. But I have actively seen folks who are on track for PSLF, like, as in they've submitted an employment certification form previously. I have seen folks be moved to MoHELA already. So that could still be coming here soon. That's just an acknowledgement of, you know, hey, things have been delayed with the service or changes, but it could still happen here coming up. And then what's also interesting is I've seen a trend where non-PSLF folks that were with FedLoan as their servicer have been moved to Nelnet. So that's another student loan servicer out there that signed another contract with the Department of Education. So that's, in my assumptions, that means, you know, PSLF is going to be dedicated to MoHELA, and MoHELA is going to be the company that's prioritizing PSLF folks and in charge of that program. But non-PSLF folks, since FedLoan was such a big company with so many files, you know, folks with student loans, I think they're breaking it up. And the non-PSLF folks are going to Nelnet, from what I can tell. But definitely interested if anybody else has seen something different. So let us know if you've seen something different. Yeah, and I think this is really interesting because there's been so much information out there. And some of it even bad information. I think the crux of the matter is that a big change is happening. And the federal government first has to kind of get their head around what's going on. The servicers have to get their head around what's going on. We're still in the midst of this COVID forbearance. So there are a lot of moving parts, but they are taking action. And they are trying to create a process so that this is as painless as possible for the various borrowers. So if you haven't seen your loans start to move to MoHELA and you are PSLF qualified, never fear. Doesn't mean that something is wrong. They're doing these things in waves. And it's not 100% like there's nothing listed anywhere that's saying like all loans for public service are going to this place. But this is exactly what we thought was going to happen. And we talked about this. And like you said, previous episodes is that MoHELA was the most likely place for Fed loans borrowers to end up or PSLF borrowers to end up because of the way that their system is set up. So much so similar to the Fed loans processing service system. Yeah, the ease of the because they use the same software, essentially. So that, you know, ideally, if it was going to be anybody, we were hoping it was going to be MoHELA that would be getting Fed loans, PSLF accounts, because with PSLF, as people know, like the tracking of payments is so important. Still information to be gathered here on this, and I'm sure we'll start to continue to see updates on this as time goes on. Definitely. I think another thing we can talk about is the waiver overall, because there's been a lot of kind of, oh, I think I'm don't qualify. Oh, my goodness. I need you guys to talk to me tomorrow. I don't know if you remember seeing this, but close to October 31st of this year, we had a big wave of people asking for consultations because they thought that if they didn't sign up for the waiver, that they weren't going to be eligible to participate. So let's just kind of like give a reminder about what the waiver is, when the waiver is being considered from what's the beginning point, and when people need to submit information, what is the end point as it stands now? Yep. So the PSLF waiver was announced in October, and it is a limited time waiver that expires October 31st, 2022. So I think the October 31st date in general scared people because they probably didn't look at the year when they were looking at when this expired and there was panic. But we do have a little more time. Don't let that allow you to kind of sleep on this. You know, you do want to get stuff moving on this as soon as possible, but we do have until October 31st, 2022 to take advantage of this. Now, as a summary, what the PSLF waiver is, I'd like to say it's like a second chance at loan forgiveness for any past ineligible payments that people may have had. So that's the key word, ineligible payments. We would have had to have made payments to get access to this PSLF waiver. The two unchanged factors are that we still had to have been working in a nonprofit or 501c3 or government setting. So we still had to be working in public service while we made those payments in the past. And we still had to be working full time. And so what they're doing is they're looking back as far back as October 1st, 2007 at any eligible employment. And if you had made payments that were previously deemed ineligible because either we had the wrong loan or we had the wrong repayment plan at the time, we didn't pay enough of the payment that was due that month or we paid too much, for example, they're now going to be counting all of those ineligible payments through this PSLF waiver. So does that make sense, though, how I explained that so far? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, just to kind of bring it home with an example, if you're someone who's been working in public service, or you worked in public service for 20 years, as an example, and your 20 years was 1990 to 2010, you're like, oh, I did that. And you still have loans for some reason or another. Well, this started in October 1st of 2007. So everything that happened before 2007 doesn't matter. That 2007 to 2010 period in this example would matter as it pertains to public service. You could pick up and do, you know, maybe some more years, or maybe you picked up at another public service job at some point in the more recent future, and the total payments could count. So those three years of payments, when you weren't signed up for the program, you had some older loans, et cetera, you were making ineligible payments could count. But things that happened before October 1st of 2007 are not going to be relevant. Things that happened after that date are going to be relevant. And then I think the other thing that's important is that if you're brand new, fresh out of school, this waiver is not applicable to you. You're just getting started on public service loan forgiveness. Yep, that's a good point. Again, just to kind of drill down, like it's payments. So there's not partial loan forgiveness going on right now. There's, you know, it's not, if we worked three years, do we get some kind of forgiveness for that? No, it just means that in your example, we have, you know, 2007 to 2010 that we can go back and get credit for now, as far as payments go. And we have to make 120 qualifying payments to achieve the loan forgiveness. So it is a huge deal. This is a really great deal for people who previously had ineligible payments that they thought they couldn't correct and that had to either start over with their payment count because they had to then get on the right repayment plan or fix their loan type. So it helps people get to loan forgiveness a lot sooner than maybe they originally anticipated based on the regular rules. And it could also mean immediate loan forgiveness if someone has been in repayment since October 1st, 2007 and working in a public service capacity, no matter if they had the wrong loans or the wrong repayment plan at this point. So that's kind of an overview of what it is exactly. And there's some Q&A that we're gonna do after we kind of go through some of these big topic points today that I think we'll drill down into some more technicalities as well on like how this might be applicable to you specifically. With that being said, the important point with this topic is just make sure that if you do have any prior employment, think back all the way to October 1st, 2007. If you had any prior eligible employment where we were working full-time at a public service entity and we were making payments. And if you're not sure, if you're not sure if you made payments, it's still maybe worth submitting an employment certification form. But make sure you go back and submit that employment certification form to verify that work history. So that's what's important to do between now and October 31st, 2022, because this is still a limited time thing. This is not gonna continue on into forever. This is a temporary opportunity to have a look back at those prior payments, get them counted to speed up our forgiveness eligibility. So if you're in doubt, if you're not sure if you made payments, but you know that you worked at a qualifying employer or you're not sure if your employer qualified, you can complete the PSLF help tool, which we'll talk about in our next topic point to verify that employment. I think that's a really good segue to talking about the PSLF help tool because so many people are trying to figure out like, how do I even sign up for public service loan forgiveness? So they may have been working at a place all along and didn't realize that there was a form that needed to be filled out. They may have found out three or four years into working at some employer that they didn't have the right kinds of loans and maybe just gave up on the program. And now this new waiver is something that's gonna be relevant. So there's a lot of people who have not used the PSLF help tool. And there are even some people who've been in the program for a while and have just kind of gotten used to the old school manual way of doing things. So yeah, let's break down, what is the help tool and how does that work out? So the PSLF help tool is on studentaid.gov. So you'd wanna go to studentaid.gov to complete this, log into your account there. The PSLF help tool, the first two questions it asks you when you go through this is your EIN number from your employer or employers, if you have multiple prior qualifying employers. So that's something that you need to have ready to go in advance, the EIN number. And the next thing you need to have ready to go in advance is your start date. So exactly when you started your employment and they're gonna ask for the month, the day and the year. So it's important to know all of that in the end date. So if you've already left this employer or prior employer, make sure you know the exact end date. So the month, day and the year. Those are the first two questions it asks you when you start this employment certification form, but why it's important to do it this way now. Originally, it didn't really matter as much if you just printed out this form and manually filled it out or if you did it through this tool, but now this will get you in the system faster because it automatically verifies the employer. Since you can put in the EIN number, it runs it through the system and it will likely pull it through as already being in the system as eligible. If someone has never submitted an employment certification form for this particular employer, it might come up as pending because they have to verify it with the IRS to make sure that that entity does file as tax exempt. But that's why the EIN number is so important. But that will kind of get you ahead in the line as far as processing because we already know that the employer is eligible. We just have to have the employer sign off on this form to confirm that you actually work there. So the help tool just autofills all of that information from the employer. So it takes kind of the guesswork out of page two of the employment certification form where it asks all about like your employer address and what type of entity it is because it pulls it through directly from the IRS system. You're still going to have to print this form. You'll physically have to sign it and you'll have to have that employer physically sign it as well and submit it back to FedLoan Servicing. But submitting it through the PSLF help tool will make a huge difference in your processing time and it'll make sure that there's no tedious errors on the form with like the format of the date, for example. So that's something that we highly recommend doing now instead of doing the manual form, if that makes sense. Yeah, and so many people get a little bit confused by this because you're like, oh, there's this online tool and so much of our world is virtual now that you're like, oh, I'll just submit my form online. And it's like, there is an online aspect of the tool that's going to make life a lot better. So it's definitely worth it to do it. But you still have to do the old school, print it out. And like you said, have your employer verify. You don't want people to be submitting a form that don't work at a qualified employer. So it's like, while we want this process to be fully automated, it just can't yet because we have to verify that you do in fact work at a qualified employer and are currently employed by a qualified employer. So bear with them as they automate some of the process, but have not been able to go fully automated yet. It's a cool thing to do. It definitely will help you a lot to use the PSLF tool. While we're on the subject of kind of the tool, that's kind of the employer certification form. The other thing that kind of goes along with that, but not always exactly is the recertification of your income. So most people who are public service loan forgiveness qualified do the ECF form, employer certification form, and their income recertification around the same time every year. Well, with COVID, that's kind of thrown things off. People have not filled out their ECF form as often because there was no recertification required. And so depending on what service you're at, some servicers have reached out and said, hey, please recertify your income. Other people have updated information to say, you know, we're kicking you over to one year later. So your recertification date is not until 2022. We've even seen recertification dates as late as 2023. So can you just give us an update, Megan, on what the recertification deadlines look like and if there's anything that borrowers should be aware of? Yeah, this is a annoying piece to the puzzle right now in my mind because it makes planning a little bit more difficult. In short, recertification has not been required at all during the administrative forbearance. And there was definitely some confusion around that because keep in mind that the servicers have to give you notice of when you need to recertify by. They have to give you 30 to 60 days of notice. And during this administrative forbearance due to COVID, they were continuously pushing back the deadline or pushing back the extension with really short notice. Like there was a point where it was like within like 20 days notice that they decided to postpone payments again. And so at that point, they had already sent out recertification updates or like reminders for people who needed to update their income because that fell within like the 30 to 60 day requirement for them. And then it was null and void when they postponed the extension again. So it's been very confusing. But in summary, you have not been required to update income or recertify your income during this administrative forbearance. You can read that language on the studentaid.gov frequently asked questions as well. Now, all their guidance is right now is that recertifications have been postponed. What does that mean? Well, in my mind, it definitely means that no one's going to have to recertify income until 2022 because this extension goes all the way until January 31st, 2022. So when will people have to recertify after payments get back in? It depends, I think, on your anniversary. So the anniversary is when you were initially approved for the income driven plan. It's a rolling 12 month period where you update your income at the same time of year every year. You can find out what your anniversary is by you can look on studentaid.gov in the NSLDS file. It will have it on there. It'll probably still have like 2020 as like the anniversary for you to update or 2021. But of course, we know that that is incorrect. Those dates have already passed pretty much. Could they be postponed 12 months from your anniversary? Maybe. Could it be six months? Maybe. We don't know. So really the best guidance we can give here is that if you're in a situation where that prior payment pre-COVID was less than what that monthly payment or your income that that payment was derived from, if it was low at that time, let that lower payment, if we're going towards forgiveness, I mean, but let that lower payment kick in in February and then update your income when you're required to do so. If your income has changed on the flip side, like if your income has dropped significantly since maybe pre-COVID, then that would make sense to recalculate your payment now potentially if we needed to keep that payment lower or make sure that it was proportionate to your income currently. So kind of short answer to all of what I just said is just update income when you're required to do so, which the servicer is going to inform you of when that's going to be sometime in 2022. And this sounds like the reason people would want to book a consultation. It's like, oh my goodness, my head is spinning. You know, this thing started in 2020. They were using my 2019 return. We're in 2021. It's almost over. Payments are starting in 2022. This is like literally a four-year period of changes and tax returns and recertification. And it's like, oh my goodness, what is the strategy here? I think that is why a lot of people are booking now in addition to trying to get clarity around the PSLF waiver. So don't be afraid to be like, hey, I need some help. Right. I know it is. It's very confusing. So I think we'll find out a little bit more concrete information on like a standard answer to that. Like when people are going to have to update. I think we'll find out about that like within the next month or two, hopefully. Hopefully. Before we transition into talking about the questions that have come into our mailbag, one other thing that you mentioned to me recently was that one of your clients got a phone call, which we believe is pretty much like never ever going to happen from a loan service. It's pretty much like the IRS. The IRS is not going to call you. They're going to send you snail mail. And if somebody calls and says they're the IRS, they're just not. That has kind of been our guidance as it pertains to loan servicers as well, because generally they communicate through their portals, through email or through snail mail as well. But it sounds like that might be changing in that one of your clients may have actually been reached out to buy a real loan servicer via phone call. Tell us about it. Right. Yeah, you're exactly right. It's very rare for you to actually get a phone call from your loan servicer. Typically it's an email or maybe it's snail mail. But I did have a call recently where she informed me that her servicer was Navient, which we know now is transitioning to Aid Advantage. So that was one of the servicers that was also stepping down and they are still going forward with that movement to Aid Advantage. So she got a phone call from Navient. She at first thought it was like spammy. She didn't anticipate it being a legitimate phone call. But the more and more she started talking to the representative, it sounded more and more legitimate. And then she looked up the phone number that they were calling from and it was Navient based on their customer service line. So she told me that they were basically reaching out because they recognized that she had never been in repayment before. This was someone who had graduated like late 2019, I believe. And so they had their six month grace period after graduation and then COVID hit. So they hadn't actually ever entered repayment before and they weren't required to because the administrative forbearance paused all the payments starting March of 2020. And so they were reaching out to her to just inform her that payments were resuming after January 31st, 2022. And they were asking if she needed assistance with setting up her repayment plan because they noticed that she had not elected a repayment plan at this point and they would be happy to help her walk through that. And I thought that was very interesting. That doesn't happen. And we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but my theory on this is that it was kind of a temperature check. Maybe since they know they're moving accounts over to AidAdvantage, maybe there was just a class of people like her where they had never been entered into repayment where they were reaching out to them one by one to assist with them getting into repayment so it was smooth when they got moved over to AidAdvantage because they already from her perspective, in a sense, she's not super familiar with Navient yet because she hasn't had to make payments to Navient. So if she got moved over to AidAdvantage, that's also an unfamiliar servicer or company. So I'm thinking it's along the lines of that where they were trying to just get as many people into a repayment plan prior to the move over to AidAdvantage as possible. But I don't know. What do you think, Lauren? I think that makes a lot of sense that it could be them trying to be efficient. We do a lot of bad-mouthing the servicers and there's been a lot of frustration from the borrowers and even on our part with working with servicers. But I like to think that there are a lot of good people within those service companies that are trying to do the right thing for the borrowers and I'd love to believe that they have an efficient process that someone raised their hand and said, hey, wouldn't it be a great idea if we reached out to people so they didn't have to feel so overwhelmed so that they could get on the right plan or maybe somebody on the aid side of things, the new servicer was saying like, hey, we're going to have to take this over. It'd be really nice if people were already set up. And yeah, I'm imagining some like Kumbaya collaboration happening that would be wonderful. So I hope so. Yeah, that's an optimistic way to look at it. But I thought that was very interesting. We'd also love to hear if you've been contacted by your servicer, we're thinking anybody who's with Navient, love to know if they reached out to you as well and what the result of that phone call was. We're learning every day, just like what the processes are for all of these new changes. So it'd be helpful so we could better advise other folks on this in the future. This is definitely a team effort and we love to collaborate with other borrowers. As much as we are about giving you all great credible information, we need that information to be shared so we know what your experiences are so that we can help the greater community. So please don't be afraid to drop a comment, email us, reach out so that we know what's going on. Yeah, and you can email the help at studentloanplanner.com for just like a general comment or a general question. All right, let's head on over to our mailbag. These are some of the great questions that have been asked kind of repeatedly and we wanted to be able to share them here so that we could kind of get those FAQs knocked out. I'll just start with the first one. It says, if you're consolidating from FFEL to direct loans in order to qualify for public service, the consolidation application asks you for the type of repayment. So there are seven or different types of repayments, which we all know that's one of the reasons people book consultations with us is because there's like, I don't know which one to choose. So the question says, if you're consolidating into a new direct loan, does it matter which payment plan you choose or do all of them qualify for public service loan forgiveness? Great question. And I think this will touch on a couple important parts. So the PSLF waiver does require you to consolidate any FFEL loans into a direct consolidation loan to have them go back and count up those payments. So that's one important piece. If you're eligible for PSLF and you're looking into this PSLF waiver, make sure you don't have any old FFEL loans that you need to consolidate because that's step one before you can submit the employment certification form. So yes, it still does matter what repayment plan you're on going forward. If you have not hit 120 payments yet, you need to be on an income-driven repayment plan. So that would be pay as you earn, repay, income-based repayment, or IBR for short, or ICR. The cheaper ones are what you'd want to lean towards because if we're going towards PSLF, we want to pay as little as possible to maximize the loan forgiveness. So make sure we're choosing an income-driven plan to be eligible for PSLF going forward. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. That makes it super duper clear for people to be able to understand what they need to do in order to be able to qualify for this waiver. Okay, question number two says, do you ultimately have to switch to an income-driven repayment plan to receive forgiveness? I've been paying for seven years on an extended graduated repayment plan, which is what we see so often is, like you said, this is where those wrong payments came into play. Yep, so this is a piggyback off of that last question. So we are not yet at 120 payments from what it sounds like in this example. We only have seven years of credit. So we can submit an employment certification form to take advantage of the PSLF waiver and get credit for those past seven years now. But going forward, we need to be on an income-driven plan to ultimately receive the forgiveness after that 120th payment. So you have to right the ship. You will get credit for having been going in the wrong direction, but you have to right the ship in order for them to give you that credit. Correct. All right, number three. I work for a qualified non-for-profit, but my loans are in default. Can I still qualify for a forgiveness program? I've worked there for three years, but I'm not sure I'll be there much longer. Will I still qualify if I quit? Yeah, this is a kind of multi-part question. If your loans are in default, no, they're not actively going to be qualifying for PSLF because we're not making payments. That's why they're in default. It would be very important to get them out of default. So you could do that by doing a loan rehab program or a consolidation to get out of default. Could you still get credit? Or could you still qualify for PSLF? You could going forward. But if you quit, no, there's no like partial credit. I mean, you'll get payment. Like if you quit a year from now, you'll get credit for the next 12 months after the loans are back into good standing. And if you're making payments, but if you quit, there's no like partial loan forgiveness that we receive. Then we'd have to pay it off a different way. Yeah, forgiveness doesn't come until you've actually completed 120 qualifying payments, which is the equivalent of 10 years. You don't need to do it all at the same place. So this person could go to a new non-profit organization and pick up repayment and also be working at a qualified employer. But it sounds like they haven't made any qualifying payments up to this point. So step number one, if you're in default, is get out as soon as possible so that you can get on a repayment plan. And I think this is a really good point too to drive home. When your income goes down or when you suffer some sort of setback in life, your student loans don't need to stop being paid altogether from a forbearance or deferment standpoint. That's what we kind of default to is either we don't pay them at all because we can't afford it or we choose deferment or forbearance, which none of those are payment plans. So you can actually keep your credit in good shape, be in good standing on your loans, and also be getting qualified payments towards some sort of forgiveness, whether that's taxable forgiveness or if you're in a working environment, that's public service qualified, public service loan forgiveness. But you need to certify on an income-driven repayment plan. So this is where the income-driven plans are so valuable. You get to put yourself into a payment plan based on your income and your payment could be as low as zero, which is gonna help you avoid default, be in good standing. Like I said, keep your credit in good shape for other things that you wanna do and be getting credit toward, you know, like I said, 20 or 25 year forgiveness, depending on what your situation is, or maybe even 10 year forgiveness if you're in a public service employment situation. All right, number four says, I have two FFEL loans with a balance of $50,000 to pay off. I've been paying since 2007. So if I made these payments with Navien, do I need to transfer to FedLoans or can I stay with Navien? I applied for public service once before, but I was denied. So this is a case where you could potentially be eligible for immediate loan forgiveness under this PSLF waiver. The problem that you have right now is that you have FFEL loans and to be eligible for the PSLF waiver that we, you know, that expires October 31st, 2022, we have to first consolidate those FFEL loans and we do need to send them to FedLoan because FedLoan is who's responsible for this PSLF program and the PSLF waiver processing at this time. So I would do a consolidation application, move the loans over to FedLoan and it sounds like if you've been paying since 2007, it's possible you could have already made 120 payments total, which now will qualify for PSLF. So I would certainly submit an employment certification form after that consolidation is done and see where the cards fall on how many more payments you have left to go, if at all, for that PSLF forgiveness. And I think this is a perfect example of why this waiver exists at all. What I would imagine happened for this person when they said they applied but they were denied in the past is that they applied for public service loan forgiveness and they just got a rejection letters simply because they had the FFEL loans. As the system has evolved, they've started being more pointed with their communication and now they'll tell you, hey, your loans don't qualify because they're not direct. If you want to qualify, you need to consolidate these loans to make them direct. So previously they were not giving clear communication on the fact that, hey, you don't meet this criteria but here's what you need to do to meet the criteria. And that is one of the reasons that this waiver exists is because there was not the proper amount of communication for people to have the best chance to be successful at these programs. Yep, they've definitely done a lot better with, like you said, exactly spelling out like why were you not eligible and how can you fix it? So yeah, this is an exciting case. Definitely email us once you get the loan forgiveness. We want to know. All right, next question. If I had a baby but my income grew over the course of the pandemic, should I wait to recertify my income? Will they let me just declare my new child or will I have to update everything? This is a good question. You will have to update everything. So when you recertify or recalculate your payment, which you can do at any time, it is going to still link back to your most recent tax return to verify income as well as ask about your family size changing. So my suggestion for you is if you're going towards forgiveness and your income was a lot lower previously, which gave you a much lower payment before COVID shut off our payments, I would not update anything yet. I would wait until you're required to update income. And then at that point, the newer payment or the higher payment will kick in with your income change. But you could also acknowledge that your household size has grown, which will reduce the payment slightly by increasing the poverty line deduction that you have. All right, great information. All right, let's cover the next question. During one of your most recent newsletters called the biggest public service expansion in history. I love that they listed the name of the newsletter for us. You said that for those working at a qualified employer, they would qualify for public service. But you also said we don't have to work for a qualified employer to receive PSLF. I'm confused. Could you please clarify? So the regular rules of PSLF say specifically that when you apply for PSLF, like once you've hit 120 payments, that you must still be employed full time in public service at the time of the application and at the time of loan forgiveness. So that's the old rule. This PSLF waiver has temporarily waived that. So, for example, have you worked for a nonprofit from 2007 to 2020 and you made 120 payments during that time frame? You want to take advantage of this PSLF waiver now in 2021, but we're not working for that employer anymore. That's OK. You can still apply for PSLF doing that PSLF waiver and then get the loan forgiveness. So that I know that that's confusing how maybe we've said it. You know, it just has to do with how originally the rules said we still had to be employed at the time of application, where the PSLF waiver says that we do not, if that makes sense. That does make a lot more sense. So hopefully that clears it up for the person who is slightly confused because it's like, wait a minute. Hold on. Do I have to qualify or not? I'd love to, you know, qualify for this 10 year program. But it's for those who previously made the right amount of payments and could have qualified for public service, even though they're not currently working at an employer. All right, here we go with another one. If I start a double consolidation of my parent plus loans, which are only in my name and I make less money than my spouse, which we currently file taxes jointly. Do I have to select that on the application? Can I change that for next year if we file separately? Or once you select married filing jointly, is that the only way that your payment will be calculated? Yeah, I get this a lot because when you recertify or when you apply for a repayment plan, it always asks you how you file separate or how you file taxes, I mean. And it can change from year to year. So you can decide how to file either married filing joint or married filing separate from year to year. From a tax perspective, you don't have to commit one way or the other forever. For the student loan perspective, that's the same as well. So in this case, it sounds like 2020 they filed taxes together, joint. So the application is asking her, did you file taxes together or how did you file last year? So she could say joint to this question. And then next year, if they decide to file 2021 separately on the next recertification application or if they recalculate the payment, she could go back in and say, nope, I file separately now. It'll link back to that separate tax return and generate the payment off of that. So it can be changed. It doesn't lock you into it if you have to say that you filed joint this time around. But I understand how that could be confusing. Yeah, definitely something that could make people feel like, oh my goodness, what should I do? I'm not sure which of these things is correct. The next question is, is there any way to undo hardship forbearance and just pay the payment from the past and have it count for PSLF? I did this for almost a year after grad school, and I didn't realize I had other options and repayment plans before I consolidate it. This is a good question because I think this happens a lot where folks could be eligible for PSLF as soon as like right after they can consolidate after graduation. Either they take advantage of the six month grace period, which does not count towards PSLF, or they defer until they feel like they make enough money like after like their first year of residency or something. So they kind of miss out on a year of qualifying payments. So I think this question is just asking, you know, can I reverse the forbearance that I put myself in previously and pay those payments to have it count for PSLF? The short answer to this is no. The crafty answer to this, if you are interested in getting more involved with FedLoan servicing and communicating with their PSLF team about it, you can try. I've seen it happen where you can undo or waive a forbearance for a period of time and you would be required to make payments for that period. So if it was a 12 month forbearance, they calculate what the payment would have been or should have been at that time. And you can make that payment in a lump sum and have it qualify. This is very, very, very, very few and far between. This is not an exact science and I have not gotten it down well enough to tell folks that you can do this for sure, because I just don't know if you can. You can try, but that's kind of the long answer to this question. Yeah, that's one of the hard ones too, where I think often, you know, we look to the official guidance that is on StudentAid.gov before we provide advice. But sometimes there's just information that's not provided. And so you call into a servicer and it just depends on who you get on the phone. They're like, yeah, let me type that into the computer and make it happen. And then the other person's like, no, I don't think that's a thing. And it's hard for us. You know, there's sometimes where we absolutely know it's written on StudentAid.gov. This is official information and we have to kind of push the hand of the servicer or the person on the other end of the phone. But there's other times where it's like, no, this is not necessarily something that's black and white. And so we have to kind of go with who is on the phone. So we've just got a few more here. Bear with us. I know you're totally interested because you're one of those waiver people. Or even if you're listening, it's because you want to share this information with someone else that you know, because when we know better, we can do better. And sharing is caring. So hang with us because we got a little bit more information to give you so that you can go out there and make a difference for yourself and those around you. This next question says, what if you have loans from undergrad and worked in nonprofit and then you went back to school and took on loans for master's? How does the 10 year plan cover that? I know it's not consecutive that you have to do, but would it go back to the undergrad and include the master's? Or do I need to start my clock with the master's degree? I've seen this. This isn't super common, but if you are someone who went to undergrad for a period of time, went into the workforce and then went back to school later, this situation could be relevant. So in this example, if you did work in a nonprofit for those undergrad loans when you were initially making payments, you can get PSLF credit for those undergrad loans that you made payments on. The new loans that you borrowed, so the master's loans that you borrowed later, those are not going to have any payments credited towards those specifically. They could be eligible for PSLF if after grad school, you started working back in public service again, but they would be starting from payment one. That being said, you'll have two different forgiveness timelines. You'll be about a year or however long you were in repayment on the undergrad loans. You'll be a little ahead on those to where those loans specifically will hit 120 payments sooner. And they could be forgiven. But your overall timeline, like when you will be formally done with everything, will be 120 payments on those master's loans. So unfortunately, the reality of this is that the payment doesn't change if you get a portion of your loans forgiven sooner than the other, because the payment is only based off of income, not the balance, not interest, nothing like that. So is there a benefit to having a portion of your loans forgiven sooner? Maybe if you don't end up working in public service for the master's loans to get paid off with that program. But if you were consistently in public service for the rest of your career, was there a benefit? No. So I see that every once in a while, but hopefully that helps maybe clarify that for folks who are also in that situation. All right. We got one last question from our mailbag. This one says, I'm reading that if the loans were Parent PLUS loans at the time, they won't be eligible for PSLF even if employment was with an eligible employer. Is this correct? That is correct. So Parent PLUS loans, as they are, are not eligible for public service loan forgiveness in general. Also, they are not eligible for this PSLF waiver specifically. So Parent PLUS loans, they can be eligible for PSLF if you consolidate and convert them into a direct consolidation loan, which gives you access to income contingent repayment. Or if you do a double consolidation, that can give you access to pay as you earn, repay, and IBR. In this example, if you worked in public service previously with Parent PLUS loans, no, it would only be eligible going forward from this point. Oh, man. Those Parent PLUS loans are such a doozy. I know. But it's definitely, you know, if you have Parent PLUS loans and you're listening to this, I mean, there are options. The double consolidation can certainly be a safe haven for you to make the payment much more affordable. And of course, it's eligible for PSLF at that point. So it's, you know, I know Parent PLUS loans are a bear, but there's definitely some strategies that we have to be able to take care of you there. There are strategies in each and every scenario. Today, we spent a lot of time talking about the PSLF waiver. We love deep diving into the nitty gritty as it pertains to things that might be affecting particular groups of student loan borrowers. So if you need help with your particular situation, whether that is understanding what taxable forgiveness looks like, understanding public service loan forgiveness in general, if you think you're a candidate for this PSLF waiver, or maybe you just want to talk about when is the right time to refinance and what strategies you should be using in order to maximize your repayment plan and pay the least amount of interest. As student loan planner, we got you. It's not just me and Megan. I'm sure if you've been listening for a while, you know that we have Dan and Rob. Travis is our fearless leader. And then there's also Molly. So we are a team of six people holding various license ready to help you understand your student loan strategy and have a plan in place so that this is not the thing that's looming over your head, holding you back from reaching your other financial goals. If you ever have questions, feel free to reach out to help at studentloanplanner.com or you can just go ahead and drop one of those voicemails. You can drop a comment on any of our blogs. We're all over the place. Instagram, Twitter, podcasting, blogging, you name it. Just go to studentloanplanner.com and you can point yourself in the right direction. It has been our pleasure sharing this information with you. Megan, anything you want to say to the audience before we sign off? Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us and going through these technicalities. I think if you all have been listening for a while, you know this is my bread and butter on getting into the weeds of everything. So thanks for listening in and I hope you all have a great rest of your day.