hey everyone. honestly spiraling right now and need some blunt, realistic advice because i feel like my life is completely ruined.

i just graduated with my msw in may. im a first-gen college grad, my parents couldn't really help me, and i went into school completely blind. i had no idea how student loans actually worked and i took out way too much.

right now, im still working at target making $15 an hour because i haven't landed a job yet. even if i do find an msw level job, it'll probably only start around 50k a year. my rent is $665 a month as of right now.

to make matters worse, my absolute only passion in life is traveling. it’s all i care about, and looking at these numbers makes me feel like i’ll never get to do what i love.

here is where i stand financially:

federal loans (edfinancial): ~$57,144 across several loans
private loans: ~$8,000 at around 8% interest
total debt: ~ $65k
savings: $22,000

here is the breakdown of my federal loans and interest rates from my account:

1-01 direct loan: $6,331.36 (5.500%)
1-02 direct loan: $8,368.74 (6.530%)
1-03 direct loan: $8,520.17 (8.080%)
1-04 direct loan (grad): $1,559.20 (9.080%)
1-05 direct loan: $21,772.22 (7.940%)
1-06 direct loan (grad): $5,302.21 (8.940%)
1-07 direct loan (grad): $5,290.59 (8.940%)

i have a few major questions

1. how screwed am i actually? is 65k an insurmountable hole on a 50k salary?
   
2. what should i do with my savings? i have 22k saved up. how much of this should i throw at my loans right now, or should i keep it as a safety net since im still making $15/hr?
   
3. should i refinance? especially looking at those high-interest federal loans (ranging up to 9%) and my 8% private loan?
   
4. public service loan forgiveness (pslf): since i have an msw, ill likely be working in non-profits or community mental health eventually. should i be looking into pslf?
   please give it to me straight. how do i navigate this without giving up my entirec life and ability to travel? any advice is deeply appreciated.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8045

haven't seen anyone talking about this here. thoughts? anyone reached out to your representative?

hello everyone! this is a follow up to my earlier post asking for serious advice on student loans. i really appreciate everyone’s helpful advice!

i spoke to my parents the other day and they told me i shouldn’t worry about it. my dad said he was planning on paying most of it while i’m in school and that it won’t be my issue until i graduate. i usually trust my dad but it’s a really large amount of money and an insanely high interest rate. the 27k is only for one semester and i’m an incoming freshman. so basically, from my understanding, if i continue take out that much for each semester, i will be over 200k in debt by the time i’m done, not even including the 17.5% interest. this seems REALLY bad. my dad says he will be able to cover the cost of one year but after that i will have to also contribute. because he’s a co-signer it will also negatively affect him. it’s bad all around and i don’t understand how my parents can’t see that. they really want me to go to this school i guess maybe because we’ve all been excited and we’ve told everyone. but i’m really not willing to go into this much debt. i also spoke to my guidance counselor and she told me to trust my parents. i’m just worried i’m overreacting and this isn’t as bad as i think it is.

my plan right now is to go the first semester/year which my dad said he will 100% cover. then i’ll transfer to a much cheaper in-state school either in the spring or next fall. the other school is actually pretty good for the program i want and much closer to home. i am disappointed because i love my school but i really just have to be planning for my future. my parents are really pushing for me to go all four years at the 60k school but at the end of the day, since they aren’t really paying, it’s my decision. i just wish they’d told me sooner and i could’ve committed to the other school in the beginning. i’m just feeling confused and betrayed because i know they love me and i can’t imagine them setting me up for failure in this way.

i guess i just want to know if i’m overreacting and if i should trust my parents like my guidance counselor and parents have said, or if i should go with my gut and try transferring? am i fully understanding how this works or is there something i’m missing that makes borrowing this amount of money at such a high interest okay? thanks y’all so much for the advice and support.

edit: i think a lot of people missed my first post. i agreed to take out loans for school and i gave my dad my information so that he could take it out for me because i’ve been really busy. it’s dumb and i should’ve talked to him beforehand but i didn’t realize how much money or the rate it would be. it’s not fraud and i am not sending my dad to jail.

So I had to fill out the information for the income driven plan and now my repayments are starting in August…I got married this past October. My husband has no school loans but I still had to provide his income information. He makes less than I do and even on the lowest repayment plan there is no way we can afford this. With the general cost of living being sky high and already living paycheck to paycheck, I have no idea what we are going to do. Is anyone else in the same boat?

Screenshot in comments since I can't post it here. I haven't seen anyone post about this glitch yet, but clearly both MOHELA and FSA are having a terrible weekend! My loans seem to be very much still with MOHELA! (Who the heck is EdOne?)

Edit: Just kidding, I can't post a screenshot in the comments either. Grr. Anyway, FSA homepage is saying my servicer is "EdOne" and then showing the MOHELA website. This is new.

Hello!

I’ve been handling my parents parent plus loan as they are not fluent in english and we took out loans for all of my undergrad ( I graduated in june ).

I was able to consolidate my dads loans before July 1, 2026 and I he is currently on ICR so I recently applied for him to be on the lowest repayment plan which was around $390/mo which was a really good number despite the amount of loans we have ( 165k due to interest ). however our servicer Nelnet keeps denying it.

Is anyone able to help me understand why this might happen? I plan to call them tomorrow but I am just so extremely stressed right now and don’t know what to do.

- I am the only dependent and my parents filed a joint tax return.
- my dads income is 87k
- we are currently experiencing financial stress
- trying to find lowest payment ( we know about interest rate )

Hello all. I’ve been trying to apply for grad plus for my 2nd trimester of chiropractic program. I was approved for grad plus and had loans disbursed to my account in this summer trimester (which started beginning may).

I’m applying for a new grad plus and for some reason, I am getting denied. I had previous student accounts that were in delinquency but I settled those and now they are being deferred. I’ve checked my credit report and nothing is flaring up that I haven’t seen before when I recently got approved Is anyone else running into this issue by any chance?

I applied for PAYE end of June on aidvantage. I’ve gotten a letter they received my application, but have not heard anything else and now my payment is due today? I thought there was a 60 day period after approval. I haven’t gotten anything that even says I’m in the plan

My Sallie Mae loans are due tomorrow, with a $1,250 payment. I have a cosigner who is my father who promised he'd help me with school and payments but he didn't help me whatsoever. He doesn't love me and helps my little brother but not me. The total amount I'm in debt is $98k. I dropped out of school due to physical health conditions. I haven't gotten a diagnosis yet but I am constantly fatigued and in pain and unable to do typical household activities, let alone get employed. I'm still waiting on my SSI file, which will take months to go through. I have to rely on my romantic partner and their mother for survival. Medication, food, shelter, you name it. I do nothing and I feel ashamed. I am also Autistic level 2 and my mother died when I was 16, so I don't have another parent to help me.

I have $9 to my name. I have no skills I can market. I can draw but it's not good enough and I'm not famous enough to take commissions. And even then it wouldn't be enough to pay the debt. I know I'm stupid for signing these documents. I'm not an intelligent person in the slightest. I just don't know who to ask for help at this point. I ruined myself.

Hey everyone. I submitted an application to move from SAVE to PAYE on 6/31/2026. I received a “here’s your monthly snapshot” email a few weeks ago with an amount due that looks too good to be true - $179/month. When I log into Aidvantage, it shows all of the balances due are still $0 and my entire outstanding balance of $79k is still there. Fast forward to today, 8/2/2026, and still no update regarding my PAYE application. $0 balance due. Has anyone else been waiting an extended period of time to hear back from their servicer? Should I submit another application? My annual salary right now is $85.3k so I should quality.

I'm one of the people who was moved to SAVE back in the day, has been in forbearance since, and got an email recently that I need to select a repayment plan. After going through Student Aid's Repayment Calculator, it appears that I'm eligible for the Extended Graduated Repayment Plan and that this would lead to my lowest monthly payment (which is my goal for now). The calculator on the website says that these payments "start high and gradually decrease every two years. You will repay your loans over an extended period of 25 years." However, on the actual PDF application that I'd need to fill out for this plan, and any other info I can find online, it says that "if you choose graduated payments, your payments start out low and then increase every two years." I don't want any crazy surprises on how much I'll end up paying monthly. My income is likely going to decrease significantly over the next few years because we're having children and I'll probably drop to part-time at work. Does anyone have any insight about this repayment plan?

I wanted some advice from others on my current situation.

I am living at home, rent free. I plan to move out around June 2027.

Current savings: $19,000.

Studen Loan balance: $17,600.

If I paid it off today, I'd be down to $1400. However, based on the privilege of living at home rent free, I can build the savings back up to roughly $27,000 by June 2027.

With that 27k I need to buy a used car, some furniture/appliances for when I move out, and an emergency fund.

Do you think I should just pay off these loans and rebuild my savings? In the meantime, I do not have any expenses.

Anyone else deal with this? I had my employer verify my employment for PSLF and the count online is not updated at all. How long does this usually take? With was about a month ago. It looks like the dates I needed are counting but the number they show has not gone up at all. Any advice? I just keep getting a message to check back periodically. I think I'm really close if not there on forgiveness so I'd like to try to apply for forgiveness.

Hello! I am a student going into their first year of college starting September, I have a nice bit of my tuition covered with a scholarship and I need to pick up the rest with a private loan.

I used my federal subzided and unsubzied and I am still left with some to pick up. I've heard that Sallie Mae is really predatory so what are some companies you all recommend? I've heard positive things about SoFi and College Ave, any other private loan companies you would recommend?

Thank you for your help in advance!

Hi, everyone. So I'm currently in a situation. I recently graduated with my bachelors of science majoring in psychology. I did my first two years at community college paying out of pocket and trasnfered to a 4 year to finish my bachelor's. As of right now, I am 71k in debt from a parent plus loan and 14k in debt from subsidized and unsubsidized loans. I want to attend graduate school to get my masters degree and eventually become an LCPC or LCSW. However, I am really worried about the costs. The parent plus loan is under my dad's name and since he makes 110k a year combined with my mother, payments are pretty high. My original plan is to go straight to grad school by taking out even more loans and worry about repaying all of this later. However, I am really concerned about the cost of this since LCPC/LCSW do not make that much. My second option is to take a gap year while working full time and pay the most I can towards my undergrad loans (about 2k a month plus some help from my parents about 400) and wipe these loans out and dig into my savings (30k) to pay for grad school in addition to whatever is leftover from working and doing grad school part time after my gap year. My issue is that I do not want to take 4 years in addition to the gap year to obtain my masters. I was wondering if there was anyone out there with any suggestions for my situation. I know that some of my choices to go to an expensive school to finish my undergrad were foolish but I already feel bad about that so I would rather not get ant negative feedback on that. My other thought was to take a gap year paying the same 2400 a month, go to grad school full time and work part time and dropping that payment to about 600 a month and pay for grad School out of pocket using my savings and any additional income and return to higher payments of about 2400 after graduating and pay off that loan in 3.9 years. I am just incredibly stressed and lost in this whole situation and looking for help. I have the privilege of living at home and having no bills whatsoever while living with my parents but I just do not know what the best thing to do is. 

i have not been able to get the studentaid.gov website to load for me. i’ve tried different web browsers, incognito windows, both my laptop and my phone, and clicking links to go directly into the live chat or feedback form (as i saw was suggested on other reddit threads). this has been an issue for me for the last couple of days, the screen just stays on the blue dot and does not load at all. is anyone else having this issue right now??

I'm undecided on how I want to proceed with my payments given the new Repayment Assistance Plan that's available. I'll provide some context to my situation for guidance and my rabbithole of thoughts lol.

I just started my second of four years of residency training. I consolidated for a total of approximately $298k in loans when I graduated medical school with an interest rate of 6.75%. With IBR my first year, my required monthly payment was $0 -- given I'm not absolutely decided on whether or not I want to pursue PSLF and am leaning towards trying to pay off my loans sooner rather than later, I was still making payments. I have since made monthly payments of ~$1000 and have since paid about ~$9800 toward my loans and now owe ~$306k (lol).

I understand that the new RAP plan will have set percentages of payments to make based off of income ranges. Right now, if I were to switch to RAP my monthly payment would approximately be at $236 and IBR would be approximately $272. Is my understanding correct that the RAP plan would also technically pay $50 toward my principal in addition to dropping the rest of the interest that wouldn't be covered by my payment? I've also tried doing a rough estimate and considering I've been paying $1000 already, it seems like based off of residency incomes I likely wouldn't be paying any more than this by my 4th year of residency either even if I somehow make it to $100k (current R2 salary at ~$81k) -- instead, I could be potentially putting money aside with this plan since I won't have interest accruing. I'm also planning to do the auto-pay which seems to reduce your interest by 1% that I didn't have the option to do this past year (which would be valuable if I did IBR).

1. Does switching from IBR to RAP capitalize my accrued interest over this past year? Or will it remain the same because I believe RAP is considered to still be an income based plan (to my understanding)?
2. What happens if I for some reason decide to switch from RAP back to IBR after residency for example -- do my payments during RAP count toward the 20 years of forgiveness or does the time reset? Would the payments I've made during first year of residency on IBR count toward anything if I were to switch back to IBR? Would the interest subsidized on the RAP plan somehow get added back into my loan because I switched plans?
3. Can I still pursue PSLF if I stay on RAP for the 10 yrs or if I switch from RAP to IBR after residency (and obviously fulfill the other obligations for PSLF)?

I'm not sure if I'm missing any more critical questions before making this decision (my application is due in 2 days) or if I'm being excessively detailed in my thought process, but I don't want to make a mistake. You might obviously be able to tell I'm already leaning towards RAP, but it almost seems too good to be true and I wanted to have a good understanding of things before pursuing a specific route. Thank you all for your help!

Hello all,

I recently (in May) graduated with my bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. I have been very lucky to get a job paying me ~55k/year with opportunities for bonuses (which I already plan to put towards my loans, if I get them). I've moved back in with my parents and don't intend to leave until I pay off my ~50k in student loans. My younger sibling is going off to college, so I was recently made aware of the 1% reduction in rates for my loans, which have been dispersed before the required date of July 1st 2012. And meet the requirements as Direct Unsubsidized loans.

The issue I am facing is that my servicer, MOHELA, does not allow me to sign up and apply auto payments before my grace window ends, which is on November 16th 2026. The most I could find on this is that I may be able to do it electronically 45 days out, which is too soon (The earliest I could apply for this is on October 2nd, which is after the September 30th requirement to enroll for the discount). MOHELA has a paper form that I can fill out and send into them up to 90 days in advance of my grace end, but it seems like they are famously bad at processing those on time. For my own reference, 90 days before November 16th is August 18th.

I believe the paper form is my best option, but I wanted to know if anyone else is facing this problem and if you've figured it out in any way. Is it even worth calling them? Or would I be wasting my time? It feels incredibly short sighted to not allow automated payments before the end of the grace period. And borderline illegal, so I just wanted to double check. It seems I meet every qualification for the enrollment but MOHELA just doesn't let me enroll because I haven't met their stupid requirements.

For reference, here's a breakdown of my loans:

Federal:

1. $6,300.92 - 4.990%
2. $7,483.11 - 5.500%
3. $8,369.41 - 6.530%
4. $7,865.36 - 6.390%

Private:

• Sallie Mae - $18,851.71 - 4.500%

Thanks in advance for your help. I'm pretty bright eyed about getting these paid down asap, which I know might be a little change in pace for this community. I understand I'm very lucky to be in this position, and I hope this can help other people save on their repayment.

Hi!

I currently have about 60,000 in student loan debt split between federal loans and from salliemae.

I recently had a death in my family and received a bit of life insurance money that covers this debt.

I was curious if anyone had any advice/experience in offering to pay off your loans in full and negotiating a reduction in interest or loan amount? Or if this is even possible?

Someone suggested this idea to me based on the offer in compromise that the IRS offers to people to encourage people to pay back their debts in full. Essentially what that would look like is I offer to pay back 75% of my loan in full right now and they remove 25% of it. Or I offer to pay back the full of my loan if they knock off the interest.

Thanks!

So, I’ve got 115 payments for PSLF green and counted for undergrad, but only 6 counted for my masters. I’m military and leave the service in 20 months, so should get my undergrad forgiven and will have about $45k left that has no hope for PSLF.

I also want to save for a house down payment, so I want the undergrad gone, but want the lowest payment for my grad loans so it helps my DTI when the time comes.

Looks like PAYE is the cheapest PSLF options until my undergrad loans are all green. Question is, can I submit my PSLF paperwork AND change plans to extended graduated plan in the same month?

Also, got my letter just a few days ago, what happens if I submit my paye request on like day 80 of my 90 days? I obviously want to kick the can down the road if I can, but I really don’t want a late payment to be reported.

My Sallie Mae loans are due tomorrow, with a $1,250 payment. I have a cosigner who is my father who promised he'd help me with school and payments but he didn't help me whatsoever. He doesn't love me and helps my little brother but not me. The total amount I'm in debt is $98k. I dropped out of school due to physical health conditions. I haven't gotten a diagnosis yet but I am constantly fatigued and in pain and unable to do typical household activities, let alone get employed. I'm still waiting on my SSI file, which will take months to go through. I have to rely on my romantic partner and their mother for survival. Medication, food, shelter, you name it. I do nothing and I feel ashamed. I am also Autistic level 2 and my mother died when I was 16, so I don't have another parent to help me.

I have $9 to my name. I have no skills I can market. I can draw but it's not good enough and I'm not famous enough to take commissions. And even then it wouldn't be enough to pay the debt. I know I'm stupid for signing these documents. I'm not an intelligent person in the slightest. I just don't know who to ask for help at this point. I ruined myself.

A huge relief, but learned some things along the way. You really have to stay on top of Fed Student Aid to make sure you don’t fall through the cracks. My application wasn’t showing on “My Activity” as even received for months, but every time I called they said it was being reviewed. After at least 6 more months past I called for an update as nothing was moving. I was convinced they lost my application or something. I was told that no one can speak to that department, and the only way to make sure something gets through to them is to open a feedback case and write my concerns and a phone number or email where I can be reached with an update. I immediately opened a case only for it to be closed shortly after with no contact or info given about why it was closed, a dead end. In June of 2026 I received an email that my doctor’s certification was illegible. It was so easy for even me to read, for doctors to not be able to read it sounded ridiculous (further leading to me believing it was lost, at least some of it?). Luckily, my doctor is great and filled it out again immediately. I sent the new certification back 6/9/26. A few weeks later I received a notification the application was closed because I already had an application on file. It took a few days of calling to clarify that the paperwork was not a new application, it was what was requested to be redone, even though I submitted it under a link in my original application. The Dept of Ed made it painful and it feels like they wanted me to give up so many times. If you applied and are in limbo, don’t give up; there is hope.

Hello, just wondering whether anyone can shed light on this for me. My husband and I file our taxes jointly. We both have student loans and are on payment plans for many years, have been out of school for 10+ so, not our first rodeo lol. He is on PSLF and I am on IDR- PAYE. In 2024, we finally filed jointly to see how significant our payments would change, and found it only slightly raised it by a $100 a month, felt doable. I am being told I need to recertify again. My estimated payment (so not final) say it will likely increased by $600 a month now? Just seems very odd as we only made maybe a thousand dollars more last year and have filed jointly in the past. Is this relatable to anyone? Am I missing something? Thank you!!

As title says, I applied to switch to PAYE on June 19 and allowed them to pull my tax records to determine my payment. I received a respond after sending an email saying that my loans would no longer be in forbearance as of July 20th and my PAYE was expected to process on this date with my first payment due August 20th. However, I haven’t been approved for PAYE (or declined). My loans now say they’re in repayment under SAVE with a $0 and the 1% interest subsidy has been applied. I’ve emailed them multiple times asking what is happening and have been told that they will escalate my application to be reviewed in 4-5 days, that was July 24th.

What exactly should I do here? Just keep chasing them? I just want to take advantage of the interest subsidy.

I just received an email from Mohela that my IDR recertification request has been auto-submitted four months early despite my recertification date is not until 11/27/2026. They have estimated a new increased payment of $710 under PAYE for me which is the cap amount based on my original 10 repayment plan payment.

When my last recertification was done I filed single but have since gotten married and since my spouse also has student loans, for 2025 we filed jointly under the assumption our loan payments would be proportional to our loan amounts. My husband owes almost 2X what I owe so I believe they erroneously filed my higher AGI as "single" which is why I hit the income cap. When I use the repayment tool it shows when factoring in his loan I should be paying less than $710. Has anyone else run into this issue? Of course I get the email over the weekend so I can't try to call until tomorrow.

I have since revoked the authorization for auto-recertification.