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Major Dilemma with my new wife’s PSLF

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Total Posts: 2

Joined 2016-09-14

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Dealing with a tough situation here and was hoping I can get some advice.

Last year my wife and I were married.  She is about to enter her 3 year of IBR on the PSLF program.

My wife has $100k in student loans.  Being in the public sector, the obvious move for her at the time was to apply for IBR in the PSLF program in a “run out the clock” scenario moving towards having her loans forgiven after 10 years.  Unfortunately now that we are married we are dealing with a Married Filing Separate vs Jointly problem.

My income is about $170k and I have no student loan debt.  If we were to file jointly this would dramatically increase her monthly student loan payments, however if we file separately we lose a substantial tax savings.  We are about to buy our first home and kids are only a year or two away.  I feel like this is a catch-22 situation as we either dramatically increase our student loans by filing together or lose a ton of advantages in tax savings when you have a house and kids by filing separately.  Filing separately is about the worst thing you can do in regards to taxes.

This seems like quite a unique situation given my high income and I can’t find any great advice out there.  Hoping someone here can help.  What do we do.

Thanks in advance

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Total Posts: 3

Joined 2017-02-26

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I am final, I am sorry, but I suggest to go another by.

Total Posts: 1

Joined 2017-08-14

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I have done exactly what you’re talking about for 14 years now.  Only reason I survive is because my husband has income that pays the bills.  We have given up these tax breaks for years now because of PSLF and just now finding out I have not only the wrong servicer but apparently, wasn’t ever told (nor was it shown anywhere on my online servicer portal) that I have FFEL loans.  Just sucks - I’m just now starting all over.  Gonna be well into retirement age when and if this is ever over. 

$34K ballooned to $76K under IBR, now taking that $76K to another servicer and praying that PSLF will still be around ten years from now.  American taxpayers getting bit by all this interested being paid to these servicers at our expense.  BTW - I’ve already paid off my original loan amount, this is just gravy profit to student loan servicers.