The SAVE plan, the Biden-era income-driven repayment program that enrolled more than 7 million student loan borrowers, was struck down by a federal court in March 2026. The repayment pause that followed it ended. And now the Department of Education is sending notices to every borrower who was enrolled: you have 90 days from when you receive that notice to pick a new repayment plan. If you do not respond, the department will automatically move you into the Standard Repayment Plan, which typically carries higher monthly payments and does not qualify for income-driven forgiveness programs like PSLF.
This is not an abstraction. Borrowers who ignore the notice, miss it, or get confused by the paperwork are facing payment increases that could be hundreds of dollars per month. The transition is also happening against a backdrop of servicer dysfunction: MOHELA, which manages the majority of affected accounts, has been rated the worst-performing loan servicer in the country for wait times. The average call wait is 13 minutes, 14% of callers hang up before reaching anyone, and the company received more than 41,000 formal complaints from borrowers last year.
SAVE — Saving on a Valuable Education — was the most generous income-driven repayment plan the federal student loan system had ever offered. It capped payments at 5% of discretionary income for undergraduate loans, offered faster forgiveness timelines than older IDR plans, and provided interest subsidies that kept balances from growing for borrowers who stayed current. For millions of low- and middle-income borrowers, it significantly reduced monthly payments compared to the previous REPAYE plan it replaced.
A coalition of Republican-led states sued to block SAVE, arguing it exceeded executive authority. A federal appeals court agreed and issued an injunction that effectively ended the plan. The Supreme Court declined to intervene. The Biden administration’s attempt to offer a modified version was also rejected. By March 2026, SAVE was legally dead, and borrowers enrolled in it were placed into a repayment pause while the Department of Education figured out the transition logistics.
That pause is now over. The notices going out between July and October 2026 mark the end of the transition period. Borrowers who don’t act are defaulting into a plan that may cost them significantly more, and in some cases, pulling them off a track toward loan forgiveness they were counting on.
Log into studentaid.gov and check your current repayment plan status. If you were enrolled in SAVE, you will need to apply for a new income-driven repayment plan. The remaining IDR options are IBR (Income-Based Repayment), PAYE (Pay As You Earn, for eligible pre-2014 borrowers), and ICR (Income-Contingent Repayment). The application is available at studentaid.gov/idr and takes approximately 20 minutes.
If you are pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness, verify that the plan you’re switching to qualifies. IBR qualifies. PAYE qualifies. ICR qualifies. Standard Repayment technically qualifies for PSLF but only if you can afford the full payment, and the payments won’t be forgiven at the 10-year mark if you switch to IDR later without the full qualifying payment history.
The servicer processing backlog is real. MOHELA’s processing times for plan changes have been running two to four weeks behind. Submit your application now rather than waiting for your specific notice date. The 90-day window is from receipt of your notice, but earlier submissions reduce the risk of being auto-enrolled in Standard before your new plan is processed.
Your qualifying payment count for PSLF does not reset. However, payments made under Standard Repayment do count toward PSLF only if you make full standard payments. If you’re within a few years of PSLF forgiveness, being placed on Standard may not be catastrophic, but the monthly payment amount is likely much higher than what you were paying under SAVE. Switching to an IDR plan as soon as possible keeps your qualifying payment count intact and maintains the lower monthly payment that was part of your repayment strategy.
