You shouldn’t lose your progress toward IDR forgiveness if you consolidate your FFEL loans into a direct loan. However, when you have a mix of loan types, and different amounts of progresss, the ideal consolidation strategy becomes a bit more complicated, and I can’t give you a definitive answer without having a conversation first. The last thing I want to do is give you bad advice because I didn’t get the full story and I made innacurate assumptions.

I have a mix. I have 8 FFEL loans and the rest are Direct. I missed the deadline. My concern is consolidating the FFEL loans (thereby giving up my years of IBR forgiveness) for PSLF then losing the PSLF job. What should I do?

First, you may not need to consolidate for PSLF, that depends on the loans that you have.

But to answer your question, you should lose the progress you have already earned toward IDR forgiveness. Here are the rules on forgiveness progress when you consolidate.

These are all excellent questions, and somewhat tricky to answer.

First, the consolidation clock issue is a tricky one. In the past, it did restart the clock. Fortunately, new rules came along that changed that unfair rule. I’d encourage you to read this article about loan consolidation and the forgiveness clock. This already complicated subject is made a little more complicated by the recent SAVE litigation. The latest status of the case is that all SAVE regulations are temporarily blocked, which would include the new rule regarding student loan progress toward forgiveness in a new consolidaiton loan.

Ultimately, because you have FFEL Loans, consolidation will be required to qualify for PSLF. It is possible that it would change your interest rate (they revert back to the original interest rate from when you borrowed your loans). However, it would also make you eligible for the new SAVE plan, which could save you a considerable amount of money each month, if it survives the lawsuit.

To answer your last question, you are allowed to consolidate. As for whether or not it is worth it, I can’t say for certain. I’d lean toward yes, but that is the type of thing that requires more information and a longer discussion.

That is a strange sequence. Were you able to pull the history from the NSLDS that I linked to in the earlier comment? It should explain it there.

That said, even if you were on forbearance that entire time, you should still get credit toward forgiveness when the one-time adjustment happens.

Good morning Michael, I found the loan but how can I get in touch with someone because I did a consolidation of all my loans and when I look at the history it show activity in 2004 and then nothing until 2021 as a forbearance and there is no way I was on a forbearance for almost 20yrs, how can I get this resolved? Best Regards

Hey Michael, ok thank you, I will check it out

That is a tricky one to answer without knowing a bit more information.

To dig into it further, I’d suggest you first take a look at the Department of Education records. They keep a complete database of all federal loans which should include any Perkins loans.