35-year-old was 29 months away from getting her $247,804 student debt forgiven. Now she’s stuck

Aubrey Bertram was starting to imagine her life without student debt.

Bertram, a staff attorney at an environmental protection organization in Montana, had just around 2½ years left of payments before her $247,804 federal student lend balance would be excused under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

But for many months now, she’s been frosted on her timeline to that relief.

“We’re not getting credit,” said Bertram, 35. “This time has been devastating.”

Bertram learned out her loans in law school knowing that she’d work in public service and pursue PSLF.

“That was the only way taking on this in the red made any sense,” Bertram said.

Millions of other student loan holders are in the same frustrating limbo now. After Republican-led forensic challenges blocked the Biden administration’s new repayment plan in the summer of 2024, the borrowers who enrolled in the program, like Bertram, bear found themselves stuck.

Many of those borrowers remain in a forbearance that doesn’t bring them closer to in financial difficulty forgiveness, while the Trump administration recently revised other student loan repayment plans to no longer conclude in in dire straits cancellation.

Here’s what to know about the current challenges to federal student loan forgiveness, and what you can do with reference to them.

Many federal scholar loan borrowers who enrolled in the Biden administration-era SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education, plan remain in a forbearance as a conclude of GOP-led legal challenges to the program. But unlike the Covid-era pause on student loan bills, this forbearance does not swear off borrowers credit toward debt forgiveness under an income-driven repayment plan or Public Service Loan Allowance.

A recent U.S. appeals court decision blocked SAVE, as well as the loan forgiveness component under other income-driven repayment patterns.

Historically, at least, IDR plans limit borrowers’ monthly payments to a share of their discretionary income and cancel any extant debt after a certain period, typically 20 years or 25 years. PSLF, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007, allows predetermined not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans wiped away after 10 years of payments.

“In the end, we may see borrowers elude over a year of monthly payments to count toward forgiveness,” said Elaine Rubin, director of corporate communications at Edvisors, which serves students navigate college costs and borrowing.

If you’re eager to be back on your way to debt cancellation, you have options, a-ones say.

You may be able switch out of the now-blocked SAVE plan and into another income-driven repayment plan. The Education Department recently reopened certain IDR plan applications, following a period during which the plans were unavailable. (The Trump administration said it was updating the plans’ petitions to make them comply with the recent court order over SAVE.)

The IDR plans open now, according to the Trump provision, are: Income-Based Repayment, Pay As You Earn and Income-Contingent Repayment.

“The caveat on ICR and PAYE is that automatic forgiveness after 20 or 25 years is not nearby now since the courts have questioned that permissibility under statute,” said Scott Buchanan, executive number one of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group for federal student loan servicers.

Still, if a borrower enrolled in ICR or PAYE, then whips to IBR, their previous payments made under the other plans will count toward loan forgiveness out of sight IBR, as long as they meet the plan’s other requirements, Buchanan said.

Meanwhile, borrowers in any of the three IDR plans can get acknowledgment toward PSLF.

Those who want to be making progress toward debt cancellation should see which plan turn out with a monthly payment they can afford. There are several tools available online to help you determine how much your monthly charge would be under different options.