In January, we shared that the Department of Education had added important new information to studentaid.gov showing borrowers their progress toward being debt-free through Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans. As we reported, borrowers could log into their accounts on studentaid.gov and see an IDR progress tracker showing how many months of qualifying payments they had made in IDR. They could also see how many more years and months of payments they would need to make until they would be eligible to have any remaining loan balance cancelled.
However, recently we have seen the federal government remove lots of information from government websites, and this IDR progress tracker could be removed at any time. Borrowers should therefore save this information while they can, in case it is removed from their accounts. Do it today!
Why save the IDR progress tracker? If the IDR progress tracker is removed from borrowers’ accounts, it will be much harder for borrowers to make informed decisions about how to manage their loans. For example, right now, if you consolidate your loans your consolidation loan will start with no months credited towards IDR forgiveness, regardless of how long you were in an IDR plan previously. Without the tracker, it will be difficult for borrowers to know how much time toward cancellation they stand to lose.
The tracker also helps borrowers see how much time remains until their loans are eligible for cancellation in an IDR plan. Removing the tracker would make it harder for borrowers to make sure they actually get their loans cancelled when they are eligible for cancellation, and to dispute any mistakes the government or their servicers may make by failing to credit borrowers for qualifying time in repayment.
We are encouraging borrowers to screenshot their IDR progress tracker on studentaid.gov and to save it as soon as possible. Here’s how to do it:
- Log into your federal student aid account on studentaid.gov.
- You should now see your “student aid dashboard.” On the right hand side of the screen, there is a new section showing you how much time is left until the IDR End of Payment Term. This is how many more years and months of qualifying payments you will need to make before you qualify to have any remaining balance on your student loans canceled. Below is an example of what you are looking for on your dashboard:
- Take a screenshot of your dashboard that includes this IDR End of Payment Term information and save it to your files. (Or print the page to PDF and save to your files.)
If that’s all you have time or energy to do, stop there. But if you want to have records of all of your qualifying months of payments, and especially if you attended school during different time periods and have multiple loans that have different payment counts, continue with the following steps to save more of your information. This additional information will put you in the best position to protect the progress you’ve already earned against any attempts to take it away or any servicer mistakes.
- Click on “View IDR Progress,” which will take you to a page where you can see your qualifying payment count for each of your federal student loans. Under “Qualifying Payment(s)” you will see, for each of your loans, how many qualifying payments you have already made toward qualifying to have the remaining balance of your loan cancelled via IDR. Again, consider saving screenshots, or printing to PDF and saving to your records. An example is below:
- Next, click “Payment History.” This page will show you, for every month since you started repaying each of your loans, whether the Department recorded that month as a “qualifying” payment month toward your IDR payment term, vs “ineligible.” An example is below. Screenshot (or save as PDF) the full payment history for each of your loans for your records. Only ten entries may show up at a time, so make sure you take a picture of each page of payments.
We hope that the Department will not take this critical information away from borrowers, but it is best to be prepared in case it does.
Are you enrolled in IDR and working towards being debt free? Share your story.
