Hello Readers,
Happy post-Memorial Day weekend to all of you. I’ve got lots of updates to share today!
Primarily, I have good news related to a big deadline extension, as well as PSLF news and Mohela upgrade information. Let’s start with the most positive novelty, below.
Good News: The IDR One-Time Adjustment has been Extended
The IDR One-Time Account Adjustment deadline has been extended from April 30th, 2024 to June 30th, 2024!
In case you hadn’t heard of this before, the IDR One-Time Adjustment is a recent regulatory update that gives a federal student loan borrower income driven repayment credit that wouldn’t have otherwise counted for any time period any loan was in repayment (sans In School Deferment time) for the entire history of their loans.
This includes forbearance periods 12 months in a row or more, any payment made in any repayment plan and any deferment that is not education-related, such as Unemployment Deferment or Economic Hardship Deferment.
Borrowers whose loans have been fully consolidated after July 1st, 2010 are already eligible for the IDR Account Adjustment benefit, and do not need to do anything to take advantage of it.
However, if any of your loans don’t have word, “Direct” in the loan descriptor (e.g. Direct Stafford, Direct Subsidized, Direct Consolidation… etc.), then you may need to have your account reviewed to see if consolidation is beneficial for you.
Examples of loans that may require consolidation include:
- anything with the acronym FFEL or FFELP
- loans that do not contain the word, “Direct” and simply say “Consolidation” or “Stafford” or “Unsubsidized” etc.
Additionally, if you have multiple loans, with some being quite a bit older, and you had periodic gaps of In School Deferment between the disbursement of these loans, you may benefit from consolidation, as well.
Lastly, if you have a different number of PSLF qualified payments on some of your loans, then you may also need to consolidate.
Questions about the
IDR One-Time Adjustment?
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PSLF Changes, a Processing “Pause” and a Platform Upgrade for Mohela
Big changes are also happening at Mohela and the US Department of Education.
📅As of May 1st, Mohela will no longer manage the PSLF program. The PSLF department is being transferred to Federal Student Aid (U.S. Department of Education), who will manage the program directly.
If Mohela has been your loan servicer, and you’ve been tracking your PSLF on their site, you’ll note that even the PSLF Payment Tracker at Mohela has already been removed.
Federal Student Aid (FSA) is not a loan servicer like Mohela, Nelnet, or Aidvantage. They are the student loan headquarters, where all loan federal student loan disbursements and tracking happens.
Your federal Direct student loans can still be serviced by Mohela or one of the other 3 Direct student loan servicers: EdFinancial, Nelnet or Aidvantage, but the PSLF program will be with FSA directly.
If you’ve been working toward the PSLF program long enough, you may remember that the PSLF department was managed by Fedloan Servicing for the first 15 years of the program (October 2007 to October 2022). However, in July 2021, Fedloan Servicing announced that it would not accept an extension of its federal student loan servicing contract, which included processing for the PSLF Program. Mohela then took over the PSLF program… until now.
Federal Student Aid will solely handle the PSLF duties – everything else is up to the loan servicer (e.g. making payments, processing forbearance, approval letters for your IDR enrollment renewals, etc.). Additionally, Federal Student Aid won’t be ready to process PSLF inquiries or recertifications until at least July 20th, 2024.
So who can help you with your PSLF concerns right now? Absolutely no one! (Well, I can help with questions about the program.) We are in a PSLF “pause” period until at least July 20th 2024, when FSA will hopefully have a fully trained customer service group and begins fielding calls, as well as processing PSLF forms, again.
But wait, there’s more!
In addition to Mohela’s PSLF payment tracker being down, their losing the PSLF department, AND possibly transferring your loans to a different loan servicer, Mohela is also changing their entire website platform.
Instead of logging into Mohela.com, borrowers will eventually need to log into Mohela.studentaid.gov. This new platform will be available to some sooner than others.
Some borrowers have already been able to view their accounts on the new platform, others still can’t create a username and password, yet. This transition will require some patience, but it will eventually be available to everyone.
And that’s the whole story for today. To summarize:
- The IDR One-Time Adjustment Waiver has been extended to June 30th, 2024. If you need help figuring out if you’re already eligible to receive adjustments, or have any doubts at all, please do not hesitate to set up a call with me.
- The PSLF program will now be managed by the US Department of Education directly. No more PSLF for Mohela.
- Mohela will either transfer your loans to another servicer or keep your loans in-house.
- If your loans remain with Mohela, you’ll soon need to create a new e-account at mohela.studentaid.gov