Some background about my situation:
- Graduated from business school (MBA from top 15 school) in May 2014
- Married when I was in business school
- Started a company after graduation
- Company is in bootstrap mode and I have minimal income from it and relying on my wife before it gets off the ground
- We live in New York City where expenses are very high
- In the past year I was on PAYE and my monthly payments were $0/month
- My most recent tax return we filed taxes Married filing jointly (mistake!) and this was the first tax return we filed after getting married recently
- Now it’s beginning of January and I find that I have to submit paperwork to renew my income based repayment plan
- My wife’s income is high enough that our monthly payment will shoot up to at least $1100 a month, but we are barely making it as it is now because of cost of living (mainly rent)

I realized now that I should have done MFS, so that I could continued on my previous year plan. My loan servicer (phone rep) said that it’s a moot point since there was a change in the rules and that if you live together then they look at both incomes.

I need about one more year of breathing room before I can make payments in the $1100 range, so my question is what are my options? Should I apply for forbearance? I can probably only afford to pay $400 and that’s a stretch at this point.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Maybe apply for a forbearance or deferment if you qualify, and when you file your tax return for 2015, choose married filing separately and submit a request to recalculate your IDR payment due to change of income. Not sure if you can submit your 2015 tax return for them to calculate your payment, or if you have to provide paystubs, but hopefully the former, because otherwise they calculate based on gross earnings.

That’s all I can think of. Deferments and forbearances have limits though, I believe each one has a max of 3 years for the life of the loan, but in-school deferments are limitless, as are administrative forbearances.