Currently, I am on an IBR plan and have made approximately 40 of my 120 qualified payments for PSLF.

I was married in 2014 and am trying to decide whether to file jointly or separately. Filing separately obviously keeps my student loan payments lower ($350 vs. $600+), but we lose out on many tax benefits including IRA deductions and the ability to make Roth IRA contributions. (As an aside, considering how critical retirement savings are, these specific tax implications do not receive nearly enough attention in these discussions.)

Using the StudentLoan.gov repayment calculator, it appears that I no longer qualify for IBR if we file jointly. My payments on the Standard Plan would be $600+ and my repayment period would be 120 months. Is that 120 months from now or from when I started making payments back in 2011? I’m trying to weigh the benefits and whether I will still be able to utilize PSLF in any meaningful way. Am I missing something here?

According to ththe ibrinfo website: “If your income increases to the point where you no longer have a partial financial hardship, any unpaid interest that has accumulated would be capitalized (added to your total loan balance). You can still stay in IBR, and your payments will be capped at the 10-year standard monthly payment on the balance you owed when you first entered repayment on the loan. You will never be “kicked out” of IBR based on your income. ” so it wouldn’t make sense to switch to standard…married filing jointly will just affect how much income that ibr will take into account.

Thanks for the reply. I actually ended up plugging my loan information into Bankrate’s Amortization calculator:

http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/amortization-calculator.aspx

This shows you detailed payments, principal, and interest costs by month under the Standard Plan (or IBR with Standard Plan payments). Using this calculator, I see that after 120 months of qualified payments (I’ve already made ~40) I would still have outstanding loans that would be forgiven under PSLF.

The more complicated calculation is whether the savings in cash flow (~$3,000/year) of Married Filing Separately is offset by the loss of deductions and tax-advantaged retirement accounts (IRAs) that come with Married Filing Jointly. I need to get an accountant to help answer that question.