My wife and I have both been making payments under IBR. She qualifies for PSLF after 10 years, I don’t and am working toward forgiveness after 25 years. We now plan to switch to REPAYE.

If we switch, will we still receive credit for the qualifying payments made under IBR? We don’t want to restart the clock on my wife’s PSLF by switching repayment plans.

Thanks for your help.

I don’t believe switching repayment plans should have any affect on the number of qualifying payments you have made… the only time I can think of that would wipe out your payments would be a consolidation, because the old loan no longer exists….in the case of repayment plans, they include the standard 10-year repayment plan as qualifying because people might have been on it for a few years before they switched to an IDR plan, and it lets them switch without losing any qualifying payments.