Guide

SAVE is terminated. What are your actual options now?

The plan millions of borrowers were parked in no longer exists. Here's what replaced it, what your new payment might be, and how to sanity-check the servicer's number.

Policy vintage 2026-09. SAVE's court-ordered termination and the migration of its borrowers (most to IBR) are high-confidence events through the as-of date. Specific migration timelines per servicer are medium confidence — verify with studentaid.gov. Not financial or legal advice; verify with official sources (studentaid.gov).

What happened to SAVE

The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan was blocked by federal courts and then terminated by the Department of Education. Borrowers in SAVE were placed into forbearance while courts weighed the plan, and during 2026 the migration out of SAVE into surviving plans — primarily Income-Based Repayment (IBR) — proceeded.

The practical consequence in September 2026: forbearance periods have ended, first real bills in years are arriving, and the payments are often much higher than the $0 many SAVE enrollees were paying.

The plans that still exist

Depending on your loan types and dates, you generally have these options:

IBR — 15% of discretionary income if your first federal loan disbursed before 2014-07-01; 10% if on/after that date. Forgiveness after 25 or 20 years of qualifying payments respectively.
ICR — the lesser of 20% of discretionary income (AGI minus 100% of the poverty line) or a fixed 12-year amortization. The only IDR route for Parent PLUS, via consolidation.
Standard 10-year — fixed payment, highest monthly cost, lowest total interest, no annual recertification.
Deferment/forbearance — a short bridge, not a plan; interest accrues and capitalizes.

How to sanity-check your servicer's number

Compute the formula yourself before accepting a quote. IBR is (AGI − 150% × poverty line for your household size) × 10% or 15%. ICR is min(20% × (AGI − 100% × poverty line), 12-year amortization payment). If the servicer's number is materially higher, something is wrong — your income documentation may not have been processed, or you may be quoted the terminated plan's formula on an unenrollable basis.

A discrepancy is not just annoying: an inflated quoted payment can push you into forbearance or default when a $0 or low IDR payment was available. Put the mismatch in writing (our status-mismatch dispute letter does exactly this) and apply for IDR with alternative income documentation rather than accepting the number.

Do not do these things

Three common mistakes in the migration chaos:

Do not simply stop paying while 'waiting to be moved' — the 270-day default clock does not care about your servicer's backlog.
Do not accept a general forbearance as a substitute for an IDR application; at $0 income, IDR costs nothing and counts toward forgiveness — forbearance does neither.
Do not pay a third party for 'SAVE migration assistance' — applications are free at studentaid.gov, and this product does not file for you either.

Run your own numbers

Every figure in this guide is a formula you can apply to your own loans in about five minutes — the free profile gives you your dated default timeline and payment ranges.