Overview
- On July 1 the One Big Beautiful Bill and a court order replaced the Biden-era SAVE plan with a narrowed menu of options and began servicer notices to roughly 6.9 million borrowers.
- Borrowers who receive a notice will have a 90-day window to select a new plan and the Department of Education told a court that the earliest SAVE exit deadline is September 29, 2026, while servicers will notify others in waves through March 2027.
- People who do not choose a plan in their 90-day window will be automatically moved into the Standard Repayment Plan or the new Tiered Standard Plan, which can raise monthly payments and increase the risk of delinquency or default.
- The Repayment Assistance Plan, the new income-driven option, sets payments typically at 1%–10% of earnings with a $10 minimum and 30-year forgiveness; separately, new graduate and Parent PLUS loans face strict annual and lifetime caps and Grad PLUS was eliminated.
- Borrowers face real operational and legal friction from servicer backlogs, staggered notices and ongoing litigation, so experts urge updating contact details, checking StudentAid.gov, avoiding unnecessary new consolidations and acting promptly because payments made while in SAVE generally will not count toward PSLF or IDR forgiveness.