First let me say thank you for this site, I just found it today. It’s an incredible source of information. Here is my situation…just got married a few months ago, both I and my wife will begin loan repayment in the near future (around March/April next year). Both of our first loans were before 2007 so we are looking at 15%. I have 129k(actually it was around 90k but interest over the last 10 years has added 30k+) in loan debt (2 masters will do that) and my wife has around 80k. I make 55k a year, my wife 25k. We have one 3 year old and a 17 year old from her previous marriage. It looks like filing separately is the way to go for us.

Would anyone file jointly in this situation?

I qualify for PSLF as I am a federal employee but my wife does not.

Do I and my wife need to be on the same plan?  I was thinking about REPAYE. My wifes income probably wont go up for awhile and may even go down but could she choose IBR 15%, if so her payment would be 0 but how does that work as if i’m on REPAYE it’s 10% and says that the payment would be split between the 2 of us..does that mean she would pay the 0% from her own IBR plan and then whatever amount is allocated from my REPAYE? What if her pay goes up? Does she then pay her own 15% and part of my 10%? It’s a bit confusing….

Also if we were both on REPAYE she would have to switch to IBR after my loan was forgiven through PSLF..as If she stayed on it that would make the PSLF pointless as we would continue to pay the same amount since our income would be the same but now 100% of our payment would be going to her loan…REPAYE seems to be badly thought out. We jokingly said we should divorce just to make our payments manageable.

Thanks to anyone who has any input on the situation