More SAVE, Forgiveness, and Parents

Yesterday I sent a breakdown of what happens next for SAVE borrowers — the timeline, your options, and what to watch out for when picking your income documentation. If you missed that email, here’s the video version walking through everything

1/ Borrower Defense win — discharge notices are going out

Some good news. The Ninth Circuit rejected the Education Department’s emergency appeal to delay relief under the Sweet v. McMahon settlement. The Department had three years to review Borrower Defense applications from post-class applicants. It didn’t get the job done and asked for more time. Two district court judges said no. The appeals court said no. That’s the end of it.

Roughly 205,000 borrowers who filed Borrower Defense applications between June and November 2022 and attended an Exhibit C school are now entitled to full settlement relief — loan discharge, refunds, and corrections to credit reporting.

One of my clients got her email yesterday confirming that some or all of her loans will be discharged. Those notices are going out now.

If you’re in this group, a few things to keep in mind:

A/ Check which loans are covered. Only loans tied to an Exhibit C school qualify under this settlement. Don’t assume all of your loans are being forgiven — go through each one. You can check the Exhibit C school list here.

B/ You still have other forgiveness paths. If you have loans that aren’t covered by this settlement, PSLF, income-driven repayment forgiveness, and other programs still apply to those loans. A partial discharge here doesn’t close the door on anything else.

C/ Refunds. We don’t have a firm timeline yet, but based on past rounds of relief, expect about two to three months after the discharge is entered for refund checks to go out.

For more details on the ruling, Adam Minsky’s breakdown in Forbes is worth reading.

2/ On billionaire wealth and the rest of us

This has nothing to do with student loans, but I saw a post this week that stopped me.

Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax proposal from 2020 — the exact same proposal, same rates — would now generate twice as much revenue. Not because the tax changed. Because billionaire wealth doubled in six years.

I think about this when I’m sitting across from someone who makes $100K a year, lives in Arlington, has roommates at 35, and can’t figure out why they feel like they’re failing. You’re not failing. Sometimes the math just doesn’t work — and that’s not because you did something wrong. It’s because the system wasn’t built with you in mind.

Not a policy prescription. Just something worth sitting with.

3/ Parent PLUS borrowers — final reminder

If you have Parent PLUS loans and you haven’t consolidated into a Direct Consolidation Loan yet, your deadline is June 30, 2026. That’s a hard date. If you miss it, you permanently lose access to every income-driven repayment plan — ICR, IBR, and RAP. That also means no path to PSLF.

You may have seen April 1 mentioned as a deadline. It’s not the actual deadline — but it’s a smart target. Consolidation takes 4–6 weeks to process, and June 30 is a disbursement deadline, not an application deadline. Your consolidation has to be fully complete by that date. Applying by early April gives you a buffer.

I know some of you have been holding off because you’re in a forbearance or deferment right now, and you’re worried about what happens when you consolidate. That’s a valid concern. But here’s the thing: if you don’t consolidate by June 30, the only repayment options left for you are the Standard plan or the Tiered Standard plan — fixed payments that may not be affordable. After that, your only exits are default or bankruptcy.

Consolidating now doesn’t mean you have to start making payments tomorrow. It means you preserve your access to income-driven options so that when you’re ready, those doors are still open.

I always think about it this way: take the steps now that put as many options on the table as possible. Consolidating does that for you.

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As always, if you want to walk through your file and determine whether the issue is eligibility or a record error, you can schedule a consultation here:

https://www.tateesq.com/book-a-call

Thank you for the responses to yesterday’s P.S. I got a lot of emails, and I want to acknowledge a few things I heard.

Most of you said some version of “do what you need to do for your family.” I appreciate that more than you know.

Some of you raised cost. And I hear you. I know what that consultation fee represents for a lot of you. You scrape, save, and sometimes borrow to afford it. Some of you have already paid other consultants before finding me, and it doesn’t sit right with me to charge you significantly more on top of that — even though I’m bringing fresh value to the table every time.

A few of you said, “Why not bring on other people to handle some of the load?” In theory, that’s the answer. In practice, it’s complicated. The other consultants that exist in this space — a lot of them refer their complicated cases to me. The platforms, the other groups — when they can’t figure it out, it ends up on my desk. So it’s not as simple as hiring someone to take half the calls.

And honestly, not every case I see is complicated. Some of you could probably be well-served by someone else. But you came here because you wanted to hear it from me.

And I’ve thought about this a lot — there’s a Michael Jordan story I come back to. He talked about back-to-back games, three games in five nights, and how he refused to sit one out. Because somewhere in that arena was a family that scraped together their money to buy tickets for the one night Michael Jordan was in town. He said it would be disrespectful to that family not to show up and give everything he had.

I’m not comparing myself to Michael Jordan. But I feel the same way about your consultation. If you’re paying for it, I think what you’re paying for is to hear from me. That’s the part of my ego I’m wrestling with — and it’s what’s made me reluctant to just hand things off.

Here’s where I’m landing. I’m thinking about a hybrid model. One day a week with four or five calls at the current price point and the same time format. The other two or three days would be longer sessions — 45 minutes to an hour — at a higher fee to match. That way there’s still an accessible entry point, and there’s also a deeper option for people who need more time.

I don’t have this figured out yet.

Later this week, I’m going to send a separate newsletter just about this — asking for your feedback and, for those of you who are open to it, volunteering for a short customer interview to help me figure out what the right model looks like. I’d appreciate your help when that comes.