When to leave SAVE

The Education Department announced last Friday what happens next for the 7.5 million borrowers still enrolled in the SAVE plan. If you’re not on SAVE — if you’re in IBR, PAYE, or ICR — this doesn’t affect you. Skip this one.

If you’re on SAVE, here’s what you need to know.

1/ The timeline

The Department is emailing all SAVE borrowers now with information about your options. Starting July 1, your servicer will send a formal notice with a specific 90-day deadline to pick a new plan. If you don’t pick one within those 90 days, you’ll be auto-enrolled into the Standard Repayment Plan or the new Tiered Standard Plan — neither of which is income-driven. If you were on SAVE because you needed lower payments, auto-enrollment into a 10-year standard plan could mean a big jump in your monthly bill.

Don’t let the 90-day window close without making a choice.

2/ Your options

You can switch to IBR right now — you don’t have to wait until July. Call your servicer and request it. Your qualifying payment history from SAVE carries over.

Or you can wait for the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which launches July 1. RAP bases your payment on income and number of dependents, protects you from runaway interest, and applies every payment toward principal. It’s not as generous as SAVE was — payments will be higher and the forgiveness timeline is longer (25–30 years instead of 20–25) — but it still provides meaningful interest protection.

If you’re pursuing PSLF, switching plans doesn’t reset your count.

There’s also the new Tiered Standard Plan (also July 1), which gives you a fixed term — 10, 15, 20, or 25 years — based on your total balance. Not income-driven, but predictable.

3/ One thing to be careful about

When you apply for an income-driven plan, you’ll choose what income documentation to submit. The fastest route is giving the Department consent to pull your tax return from the IRS. But think about whether last year’s return reflects what you’re actually earning now. If your income has dropped, if you’re waiting to file a 2025 return that shows less, or if you’re unemployed, a pay stub or signed statement might result in a lower monthly payment. The documentation you use sets your payment. Be strategic.

4/ If you had a pending SAVE application, it’s going to be denied. You’ll need to apply for a different plan.

5/ The forbearance question— a lot of you have been in administrative forbearance for over a year. The Department hasn’t addressed whether that time counts toward IDR forgiveness or PSLF. Your qualifying payments from before the forbearance carry over, but the forbearance months are still an open question.

You’ve got time, but you need to use it.

Bonus/ One more thing before we move on

We posted a new interview on the channel last week — a conversation with Mike Pierce, Executive Director of Protect Borrowers. We covered a lot of ground, but one thing that stood out is a lawsuit filed by Austin Hinkle, a former CFPB attorney, that could matter for a lot of you.

Here’s the short version: SAVE replaced REPAYE. When the court struck down SAVE, the argument is that REPAYE should have snapped back into effect — it was never independently repealed. The Department is trying to treat both plans as dead, but the law doesn’t necessarily support that. If SAVE is gone, and no one went through the formal rulemaking process to eliminate REPAYE, then REPAYE should still be available.

Why does that matter to you? REPAYE’s payments were lower than what you’d pay under old IBR. So if this lawsuit succeeds, there’s a real, tangible financial benefit — lower monthly payments for borrowers who would otherwise be stuck with a more expensive plan.

I’m sharing the interview with Mike below, and I’m preparing to sit down with Austin Hinkle, the attorney who filed the lawsuit, for a follow-up conversation. I’ll have that for you soon. For those who want to read the complaint, you can find it on CourtListener.

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Parent PLUS borrowers, this is another reminder.

If you have Parent PLUS loans and you haven’t consolidated into a Direct Consolidation Loan yet, yourdeadline 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 — 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 must be complete by that date. So 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 as possible on the table. 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

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I want to be honest with you about something.

I’m 46. I have a son who turns 4 in May. And as some of you know, I’ve been dealing with some health stuff over the past couple of years. And those things cause me to step back and look at how I’m living.

In doing that review, I keep coming back to the same thought: I want to show up fully. For my family. For you. For the people I’ve been walking alongside on what is, for some of you, a multi-decade journey.

That’s forcing me to look hard at how I’m running this practice.

Right now, I see upwards of 10 people a day, three days a week. I have 13 open lawsuits across multiple jurisdictions. I run this newsletter, the YouTube channel, the articles, the webinars — most of it free, all of it at significant personal cost in time, money, and energy. I’ve been doing this for over a decade, and I’m telling you plainly: I can’t keep doing it at this scale.

So some things are going to change.

First, I’m scaling back consultations. My availability is going to be more limited than it already is.

Second, I’m exploring what the right model looks like going forward. That might mean longer consultations at a higher price point — though honestly, 20 minutes is more than enough time for me to give you a clear strategy. It might mean some kind of group consultative format, segmented by issue type, where you’re getting personalized guidance in a shared setting.

But here’s what I keep wrestling with: so many of you get something from a one-on-one conversation that no group format can replicate. It’s not just the strategy — it’s having someone look at your situation, tell you you’re not crazy, confirm that the runaround you’ve been getting from your servicer is real, and give you a clear path forward. That’s hard to scale. I don’t know the right answer yet.

I’m sharing this with you because you deserve to know, and because if you’ve been thinking about booking a consultation, the current structure won’t be available much longer. I’ll have more details soon.