Hi Heather,

I am huge fan of your articles! I have read most of them and have learned so much from them.

My loans were in IBR for the past year. However, after renewing my application for IBR, I was transferred to forbearance without my knowledge. Is this a good thing? I was auto-paying my loans, so I don’t even know if the interest was capitalized to the principal balance. How would I find out?

  One of my concerns is with the capitalization for the loans in forbearance. I read your article “What Triggers Student Loan Interest Capitalization?” and I noticed you mentioned that capitalization can be triggered when forbearance ends. This mean that if I would have to pay off the interest before the forbearance ends to avoid capitalization, right? Or is there a possibility that the forbearance would just renew the following year?

Thanks, Heather!

Anap

Most likely they put you on an administrative forbearance. Most forbearances capitalize at the end of the forbearance, but an administrative forbearance does not. (also, administrative forbearances do not count toward the maximum forbearances you can have on a loan.) Usually you’ll see a capitalization in your loan history if it happened…although I’m not entirely sure what they do now.