Your Complete Guide to Staying on the SAVE Plan

Millions of student loan borrowers who remain in the defunct Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan have now received notices with deadlines to choose a different repayment option.

But the deadlines — usually 90-day or 30-day transition periods — have come and gone with no consequence for those who have missed them, leading to confusion among some borrowers and emboldening others to ignore the notices altogether.

Since July, the Education Department has been sending out letters and messages in batches to the approximately 6.5 million people who were still in SAVE at the time, urging them to voluntarily choose a different repayment plan.

---

Must Read

• You’re probably eligible to save money on car insurance. Compare rates for your ZIP code with this free — and fast — tool from Money.
• These 6 hacks can help retirees save money on things they’re already buying.
• A $10,000 investment 10 years ago would be worth over $30,000 today. It wasn’t a stock. See how investors are adding gold to their IRAs with Goldco’s free guide.

---

The notices, which do not include a hard calendar deadline but instead reference general 90- or 30-day timelines, have been “frustratingly confusing and inconsistent,” says Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s student loan assistance division. But that’s no reason to ignore them, she adds.

If borrowers does not voluntarily move to a different plan, they will automatically be put in the standard repayment plan. Loan bills on the standard plan are likely to result in sticker shock compared to the generous terms of the SAVE plan.

SAVE was an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan launched during the Biden administration. It was quickly challenged as an executive overreach, and borrowers were put in forbearance while multiple lawsuits played out. The plan was ultimately dismantled, yet millions of people remain enrolled.

For some of these borrowers, the SAVE forbearance period overlapped with pandemic-era protections, meaning some folks have not been required to make student loan payments for up to six years.

So far — despite the warnings from the Education Department — no one has been manually moved off of the SAVE plan, according to Scott Buchanan, executive director of the nonprofit trade group Student Loan Servicing Alliance.

That could soon change, experts tell Money.

Will SAVE ever truly end?

Some of the SAVE holdouts remain in the forbearance because they simply cannot afford to pay their loans, and the forbearance is temporarily shielding them from default. For others, they’re choosing to stay after feeling scorned from a rollercoaster of student loan changes over the past several years: failed student loan forgiveness, the rise and fall of SAVE, and now the Trump administration’s loan overhaul.

“They feel really betrayed and at a loss for what to do,” Shafroth says.

On social media, some SAVE borrowers have been rallying others to ”hold the line” and not move off of SAVE voluntarily. The lack of consequences from missing the deadlines is fueling some conspiracy theories that the Department of Education doesn’t have the capacity to move people off of SAVE.

“Do NOT pick a plan. Make them move you. I still don’t believe they will,” one Redditor wrote.

“They gave me 90 days to switch. Then they gave me a 30 day extension and told me to switch or else they will do it for me,” another said. “I think it’s a bluff and they are trying to trick us.“

But Buchanan, whose organization represents the companies that manage loan repayment for the federal government, says that theory has “zero veracity to it.” He points to the fact that when SAVE launched, servicers had to quickly move about 9 million borrowers onto the plan. He says moving about 6 million off of it would be even easier

The real capacity issue, he says, is in answering phones and emails when borrowers get their new — likely higher — bills after they switch to a different plan. According to Buchanan, that’s why the Education Department decided to send out the notices in batches in the first place.

“We don’t have endless staff to take millions of phone calls all at once,” he says.

Some experts, including Shafroth with NCLC, posit that the leniency with the deadlines may have had to do with the timing of midterm elections.

“I suspect that the Trump administration was well aware that sending people big bills right before an election focused on affordability was a bad idea politically and avoided that,” she says.

But now that the elections are over, she says the administration may think it has “less to lose” by being stricter with deadlines. Buchanan echoed a similar sentiment, stating that the elections could have been “distracting” the administration, but now they’re likely to be refocusing on restarting loan payments in earnest.

While the ultimate deadline is still vague, one thing is clear: SAVE will end.

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to get a bill in short order,” he says.

The dangers of holding out on SAVE

Experts say there are several reasons why ignoring the notices to switch off of SAVE could come back to haunt borrowers.

There are two obvious downsides, according to Buchanan. The first is that interest on the loans in SAVE has been accruing since August 2025. So while loan bills are not currently due, the loan balance has been growing in the meantime. If the goal is to pay the least amount of money toward the debt, then returning to payment would help curb runaway interest.

The other key downside is that the time spent in SAVE forbearance does not count toward the repayment timeline for forgiveness through Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or through other income-driven options, which are the plans SAVE borrowers will likely want to switch to.

For instance, the Trump administration’s new Repayment Assistance Program (RAP) bases payments on one’s adjusted gross income, and after 30 years of on-time payments, the remaining balance is forgiven. But that does not include the time spent on SAVE forbearance.

Similarly, the PSLF program extends forgiveness to borrowers who work for the government or a qualifying non-profit organization for at least 10 years while paying down their loans in a qualifying plan. Again, the SAVE forbearance does not count toward that timeline.

On top of that, there is the capacity challenge Buchanan mentioned with millions of SAVE holdouts getting switched to the standard repayment plan at the same time.

According to a July report from the Student Debt Crisis Center, the median monthly payment under SAVE was $110, whereas the typical payment on the standard plan is $674.

If borrowers are switched manually en masse to the standard plan, it might be difficult to quickly move into a plan with lower monthly payments, such as RAP or another income-driven plan, due to customer service bottlenecks.

“Sometimes the people most adamant about not doing anything are the people who need the most help, counseling and guidance,” Buchanan says. “It’s almost shooting yourself in the foot.”

Know your options in the new repayment landscape

The most important detail experts want borrowers to know: SAVE is going to end soon, even for the hold outs, and borrowers are better off preparing now.

“In my experience, folks who are waiting to be forced off simply don’t understand the full range of their options,” says Travis Hornsby, founder of the Student Loan Planner.

(Get started with Money’s guide for SAVE borrowers switching to another plan, and use the Education Department’s repayment calculator to estimate monthly bills based on income, family size and other factors.)

For most borrowers on SAVE, the unfortunate reality is that payments are going to increase from what they were before the forbearance. For borrowers with bachelor’s degrees, the typical increase from SAVE to the new RAP plan is an estimated $207 jump — from $136 under SAVE to $343 under RAP — according to recent analysis from the Center for American Progress.

Not everyone’s bills are guaranteed to skyrocket, however. A study from JPMorgan Chase suggested that many SAVE borrowers who are eligible for a different IDR plan would have monthly payments equivalent to 3% of their take-home pay.

Still, that is materially higher than $0, which is what millions on SAVE forbearance are currently required to pay. For folks who truly would have trouble making any payment, Buchanan recommends looking into loan deferment.

For example, borrowers who are receiving welfare benefits or supplemental security income can defer their loans for up to three years through economic hardship deferment. Folks who have lost their jobs can do the same via unemployment deferment.

In a statement to Money, the Education Department recommends borrowers who haven’t switched plans should take “immediate action.”

“We’re pleased that more than 2 million borrowers have already selected a new repayment plan, allowing them to make progress toward paying down their balances and access loan discharge benefits that current SAVE borrowers are missing out on,” a department official says.

However, the department did not respond to Money’s specific questions about the deadlines. When the department urged borrowers in March to start switching, 7.5 million were enrolled in SAVE, suggesting that about 5.5 million are still holding out and may be at risk of being manually removed from the plan.

Experts say don’t let it come to that: It’s better to choose a plan intentionally than be caught flat footed and stuck in the standard repayment plan.

“Listen, you’re not getting an advantage by waiting. You’re really pushing out your cost,” Buchanan says. “Today you won’t make a payment, tomorrow you’ll pay more. That’s the true downside of not making a choice.”

---

Never miss a Money story.

• Join 700,000+ readers who get the latest financial news and advice delivered daily for free. Subscribe to our newsletters.

---