If your student loans have sat in a SAVE forbearance for the past two years, you may have stopped thinking about the monthly bill altogether, which is exactly why an email from your servicer is so easy to leave unopened. Open it. A federal court order on March 10, 2026 ended the SAVE plan, and anyone who doesn't pick a replacement within the 90-day window gets moved into a fixed-payment plan the Department of Education chooses for them. Consumer advocates quoted by CNBC warn that those payments can double or even triple. The first borrowers hit their deadline on September 29, and the rest are being notified in waves through the end of the year, so your own date depends on when your servicer wrote to you.
What is actually happening to SAVE borrowers
More than 6.9 million borrowers were still enrolled in SAVE as of March, with an average balance close to $55,000, according to an analysis by higher-education expert Mark Kantrowitz that CNBC reported. Servicers began sending exit notices on July 1, each one starting a 90-day clock, but they are sending them in batches. The Department told a court that September 29 is the earliest deadline, Nelnet says it will keep issuing notices through the end of the year, and MOHELA said alerts would continue into October. Miss your window and you land in the Standard Repayment Plan or the new Tiered Standard Plan, both of which split your balance into fixed payments over a set number of years instead of tying the bill to your income. The student loan company Summer ran the numbers for CNBC: a two-person household earning just over $50,000 with $60,000 of debt at 6.8% would owe $690 a month on the 10-year Standard Plan, against $158 a month on the new Repayment Assistance Plan.
You do not have to wait for your notice. Borrowers can switch before their servicer announces a personal deadline, and nothing about this process rewards waiting.
Why this lands harder on women
Women hold most of the country's student debt, and they carry it longer.
The American Association of University Women puts women's share at almost two-thirds of the $1.54 trillion outstanding, about $929 billion, and reports that women who earn a bachelor's degree graduate owing an average of $2,700 more than their male peers. AAUW also estimates that women take about two years longer than men to repay, a gap it ties to the pay gap that opens at the first job and widens with age. A payment that doubles comes out of a smaller paycheck, and in the Summer example above, the roughly $530 monthly gap between the two plans is money that isn't going into a 401(k) or a down payment fund, the very things AAUW says women tend to postpone while they pay loans down. So the plan you pick is a budget decision as much as a loan decision.
The plans worth comparing
What you can choose depends on when your loans were made. If every Direct Loan you hold was disbursed before July 1, 2026, you can pick the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) or Income-Based Repayment (IBR), and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) remain open until mid-2028. The moment a new federal loan lands on your account, and that includes a new consolidation loan, all of your Direct Loans are limited to RAP or the Tiered Standard Plan. Keep that in mind before you consolidate or go back to school this fall.
RAP: the new income-driven plan
RAP launched on July 1, 2026. Your payment is a percentage of your adjusted gross income (AGI), from 1% to 10%, divided by 12, then reduced by $50 for every dependent on your tax return, with a floor of $10 a month. If that payment is smaller than the interest that accrues in a month, the leftover interest is waived, and if your payment doesn't cut the principal by at least $50, the government makes up the difference up to that $50. Whatever balance remains is forgiven after 360 qualifying payments over 30 years, and RAP payments count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) when they are made on time and in full. Here is the Department of Education's schedule for a borrower with no dependents.
| Adjusted gross income | Monthly RAP payment (no dependents) |
|---|---|
| $10,000 or less | $10 |
| $10,001 to $20,000 | $10.00 to $16.67 |
| $20,001 to $30,000 | $33.34 to $50.00 |
| $30,001 to $40,000 | $75.00 to $100.00 |
| $40,001 to $50,000 | $133.34 to $166.67 |
| $50,001 to $60,000 | $208.34 to $250.00 |
| $60,001 to $70,000 | $300.01 to $350.00 |
| $70,001 to $80,000 | $408.34 to $466.67 |
| $80,001 to $90,000 | $533.34 to $600.00 |
| $90,001 to $100,000 | $675.01 to $750.00 |
| Over $100,000 | At least $833.33 |
IBR: the older plan that is still standing
IBR charges 10% of your discretionary income if your first loans came after July 1, 2014, or 15% if they came earlier, and the bill never exceeds what you would have paid on the 10-year Standard Plan. Discretionary income is your income minus a protected slice of the federal poverty guideline, which RAP does not subtract at all. Forgiveness arrives after 20 years for newer borrowers and 25 for older ones. Since December 22, 2025 you no longer have to show a partial financial hardship to enter IBR. If you are in PAYE or ICR, the Department says you must move to a different plan by June 30, 2028.
Standard and Tiered Standard: fixed and final
The older Standard Plan splits your balance into equal payments over 10 years for most borrowers, and it is closed to loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026. Those newer loans get the Tiered Standard Plan instead, where your repayment period is set by your balance when you enter: 10 years under $25,000, 15 years from $25,000 to $50,000, 20 years from $50,000 to $100,000, and 25 years at $100,000 or more, with payments of at least $50 a month. There is no forgiveness, and these payments do not count toward PSLF. Skip these plans unless you can comfortably afford the fixed bill and want the debt gone on a schedule, because they are the default that catches people who do nothing.
Run your own numbers before you click anything
An unmarried borrower with no dependents and $45,000 of AGI sits in the 4% band, which is $1,800 a year and a $150 monthly payment. At $62,000 with one child claimed you are in the 6% band: $3,720 a year is $310 a month, minus $50 for the dependent, so $260. At $95,000 the rate is 9%, and the monthly bill is $712.50.
Now do the same exercise for IBR, and be ready for the answer to flip. RAP protects no income, while IBR does, so which plan is cheaper depends on your income, your family size and how old your loans are. The Loan Simulator on studentaid.gov will run both side by side using your real loan balances and rates. Pick on two numbers rather than one: the monthly payment, and whether your balance shrinks or grows while you pay it.
There is a catch that points the other way, though. Credit toward forgiveness travels in one direction only. Payments you have already made on IBR, PAYE, ICR or SAVE carry forward when you move into RAP, but payments made under RAP do not count toward the IBR, PAYE or ICR clocks if you switch back, and moving into RAP stretches your forgiveness timeline to 30 years. If a legacy plan and RAP come out close for you, think about that before you choose.
The details that trip people up
- Marriage changes the math. On a joint tax return your RAP payment is based on both incomes, though it is reduced if your spouse also has federal loans, while on a separate return only your own income and the dependents you claim count. Filing separately has tax costs of its own, so run both versions with a preparer before treating it as a loan trick.
- RAP has no $0 payment. The floor is $10 a month, even in a year when you're laid off or home with a newborn, and payments are recalculated every year, so a raise that pushes you into the next bracket raises the bill.
- The interest waiver and the $50 principal match only apply to months when you pay the full bill on time. The Department says extra payments above your bill can shrink both in that month and has promised more guidance, so don't start sending bonus payments without checking.
- Forgiven balances may be taxable. The federal exclusion Congress passed in 2021 covers discharges only before January 1, 2026, and the Department says that apart from PSLF you might owe federal or state income tax on a forgiven amount.
- Some loans don't fit. Parent PLUS loans, and consolidation loans that paid one off, can't go into RAP, and FFEL and Perkins loans can't go into RAP or Tiered Standard at all.
What to do this week
Applications are slow right now. The Education Department reported more than 530,000 income-driven applications pending as of the end of April, in a May court filing, so applying on your deadline day is a bad plan.
- Log in to studentaid.gov and your servicer's site, confirm your email and mailing address, and read any SAVE notice for your actual deadline.
- Run the Loan Simulator with the AGI from your latest tax return and the number of dependents you claim.
- Apply for the plan on studentaid.gov and consent to let the Department pull your income directly from the IRS, which speeds up processing and recertifies you automatically each year.
- After you are placed, sign up for autopay. For Direct Loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2012, autopay now cuts your interest rate by 1% instead of the old 0.25%, through June 30, 2028, and the Department pushed the enrollment cutoff from September 30 to December 31, 2026.
- Write the new payment into your budget today, even if your first bill is weeks away. Rich Williams of Summer put it to CNBC this way: calculate your payment on the next-best plan now and start budgeting for that number.
The Department's own page on the court order was last updated on September 29, and the rules here have shifted several times this year, so check studentaid.gov for anything that has changed since this was written. A $158 payment you have budgeted around since October feels like routine. A $690 bill that shows up with no warning in January feels like an emergency, and that difference is entirely in your control.