As far as I know, the one-time adjustment should still be happening. I’d be pretty suprised if it didn’t happen before the election.

When it comes to the borrowers who conoslidated to enroll in SAVE, if SAVE were to be struck down, I’d think they deserved some sort of relief. It is a tricky situation because the people who had their interest rates go up when they consolidated to get on SAVE were the people who had privately-held FFEL loans. The Department of Education certainly can’t require any third-party to reissue a loan that has been repaid. However, things still need to be made right for the borrower. At a minimum, if SAVE were struck down, I think the Deaprtment of Education should match the old interest rate. Obviously, there is a lot to speculate about on this issue. Hopefully, it never reaches that point.

@Michael P. Lux – Did the Federal Govt. hoodwink us again? The Ombusdsman office has now been dissolved! I consolidated newer loans with old ones raising 30k in interest rates from 4% to 6.5%, there is no talk of one time payment counts now and the promise of SAVE lower payments for longer looks to be dissolved. We need a lawsuit to counter the falsehoods of the last two years and for those of us who received bogus educations from private robbers/schools in the Cardona-Sweet settlement that do not get anything because the website was down for over a week, and we could not submit or save borrower’s defense without someone at US Dept of Ed finally opening it for us 2 days after the cut off!

Thats a great question. The bankruptcy stay is technically a form of forbearance, so under the one-time adjustment, it should count toward your IDR count. That said, I’d suggest paying close attention to the IDR count to make sure you are awarded the credit for those five years.

If you are not given credit for that time, I’d suggest reaching out to your bankruptcy attorney as there is a new policy that should also give you credit for the Chapter 13 time.

Thats good. In that case it appears as though you should get forgiveness when they do the one-time adjustment later this year.

At the present moment, there isn’t an obvious next step to take outside of waiting for the adjustment to happen.

Thank you! Everything is consolidated to direct as of 2017, which I failed to post in my original question. It actually shows with two parts (subsidized and unsubsidized). I am able to count 328 payments, including today’s, so I don’t know what’s going on.

Hi Deb,

I’m glad you are reaching out now, because it is possible that you have an FFEL Consolidation loan, which would explain why you haven’t had your loans forgiven yet. There is a temporary program that you can use that would potentially get your loans forgiven, but you would have to consolidate again before June 30th of this year.

If you already have a federal direct loan, it would seem that it should have already been forgiven.

Are you able to determine if your 1998 consolidated loan is an FFEL loan or a direct loan?

For people who have loans with different payment histories, consolidating before the June 30th deadline has some major advantages. This article explains how it impacts your timeline and why it is important not to miss the June 30th deadline.