Thank you so much for providing this service.

I have four Parent PLUS loans which I’d like to consolidate with the goal of applying for PSLF. I am a federal employee. My income is too high for ICR (my payments would go way up) and I need to lower my payments.

My current loan servicer wants to consolidate my loans for 30 years and tells me I will qualify for PSLF after 10 years. Everything I read online says you must be on one of the income driven payment plans OR on a 10-year standard repayment plan. The only exception would be a plan in which my payments are at the level they are in the standard 10-year plan. I phoned the student aid folks and they too said I will qualify for PSLF if on the 30-year plan. Are they correct? If so, then why would I qualify for PSLF when everything I read says otherwise?

Thank you again.

ML

Always follow what you read in the law and the department of Ed website. I don’t know where they get these clowns from that tell you such erroneous information. A 30-year repayment plan is NOT, I repeat, NOT a qualifying repayment plan. If you doubt what they say, ask to speak to a manager who will probably get it right, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a few idiots at that level as well. Your options for PSLF (because they include parent plus loans) are ICR and 10-year (which is pointless because in 10 years your loans are paid off. This is mainly there for people who were on 10 year plans to switch to an income based plan and still get credit for what they’ve paid so far). Note: this is only possible after consolidating them into a Direct consolidation loan.

Thank you very much for your response. Of course it’s not what I wanted to hear. It’s disheartening to know there is no path to PSLF for us and beyond frustrating to have been given inaccurate information by the very sources we should be able to rely on.

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