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How to Get Income-Driven Repayment Plan Forgiveness
Income-driven repayment plan forgiveness is automatic after 10 to 20 or 25 years, depending on your plan.
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Anna Helhoski is a senior writer covering economic news and trends in consumer finance at NerdWallet. She is an on-air contributor and producer of Money News segments for NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast. She is also an authority on student loans. She joined NerdWallet in 2014. Her work has been syndicated in news outlets nationwide including The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and USA Today. She previously covered local news in the New York metro area for the Daily Voice and New York state politics for The Legislative Gazette. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Purchase College, State University of New York.
Karen Gaudette Brewer leads the Core Personal Finance team at NerdWallet. Previously, she guided students and their families through the ins and outs of paying for college and managing student debt on the Higher Education team. Helping people navigate complex money decisions and feel more confident brings her great joy: as the daughter of an immigrant, from an early age she was the translator of financial documents and the person who called the credit card company to fix fraud.
She joined NerdWallet with 20 years of experience working in newsrooms and leading editorial teams, most recently as executive editor of HealthCentral. She launched her journalism career with The Associated Press and later worked for The (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, The Seattle Times, PCC Community Markets and Allrecipes.com.
She is a graduate of the 2022 Poynter Institute Leadership Academy for Women in Media. Her writing has been honored by the Society for Features Journalism and the Society of Professional Journalists. In addition, she’s the author of two books about the Pacific Northwest.
Eliza Haverstock is NerdWallet's higher education writer, where she covers all aspects of college affordability and student loans. Previously, she reported on billionaires and investing for Forbes in New York, and she also covered private markets for PitchBook in Seattle. Eliza got started at her college newspaper at the University of Virginia and interned for Bloomberg, where she spent a summer writing a feature story about plastic straws. She is based in Washington, D.C.
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Income-driven repayment, or IDR, plans cap your monthly student loan payments at a portion of your discretionary income. IDR plans may also extend your repayment term from 10 years to 20 or 25 years, depending on the size and type of your student debt. At the end of the repayment term, your remaining balance is automatically forgiven.
To benefit from this forgiveness, you first must enroll in one of the four IDR plans available to borrowers. The process takes about 10 minutes, according to the Federal Student Aid office. You can apply online at StudentAid.gov/IDR, or contact your student loan servicer for personalized guidance.
After enrolling in an IDR plan, you must recertify your income annually or whenever it changes, unless you gave consent during the application process for your tax information to be accessed. If so, your recertification will automatically renew. You will receive notice before a new payment amount goes into effect.
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Most federal direct loan borrowers are eligible for Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE), which is generally the most affordable IDR plan. One key exception: Parent PLUS borrowers, who may only enroll in the Income-Contingent Repayment plan.
How much debt is forgiven with an income-driven repayment plan?
There’s no cap on the amount of student debt that an IDR plan can forgive.
The amount of student debt you have at the time of forgiveness depends on how much you’ve already repaid over the life of your loan. If your income increases over time, and/or you have a small amount of debt, you could repay your loans entirely before the IDR term expires. In this case, none of your debt would be forgiven.
Use the Education Department's loan simulator to estimate your student loan payments and potential forgiveness under different repayment options, including IDR plans.
How many borrowers have received income-driven repayment forgiveness?
The government has forgiven roughly $45.6 billion in student loans for 930,500 borrowers through improvements to income-driven repayment plans, as of March 2024.
In 2021, only 32 borrowers had ever received IDR loan forgiveness, according to an analysis of federal data by the Student Borrower Protection Center and the National Consumer Law Center.
The Department of Education is implementing income-driven repayment fixes
Millions of borrowers are expected to benefit from a one-time IDR account adjustment that counts past payments toward the 240 or 300 needed for income-driven repayment forgiveness.
The Education Department said it will notify waves of IDR account adjustment loan forgiveness recipients about every two months, until the temporary program wraps up in July 2024.
Starting in July 2024, the Federal Student Aid office also plans to allow more loan statuses, such as deferments and forbearances, to count toward income-driven repayment forgiveness.
Months spent in the pandemic student loan payment pause also count toward IDR forgiveness, even if borrowers made no payments.