Our Public Service Loan Forgiveness calculator will show you the cheapest payment plan for you, as well as how much you could save. This PSLF calculator is completely updated using the latest 2024 federal poverty line numbers, and you'll also find out what the SAVE plan (formerly REPAYE) will look like.
PSLF Calculator Inputs
What is your family size? Enter the total number of people in your family including you, your spouse, and children your children. Include unborn children who will be born this year.
What year did you start earning credit towards PSLF? Insert the year that you started making eligible payments while working at a qualified employer.
Did you borrow federal student loans before October 1, 2007?
How much federal student debt do you owe? Input the current balance of all of your federal student loans.
List the smaller of your prior year AGI or your current income Enter your adjusted gross income (AGI). You can find your AGI on your IRS Form 1040, line 8b. If you don't have this handy, you may use an estimate.
What percent of your debt is from graduate school? Input the percent of your debt from graduate school
Do you want to forecast your income automatically at 3% annual growth or enter it manually? Choose "Automatic" to forecast 3% annual income growth. Choose "Manual" to enable a field to input your own annual income growth rate.
What's the average interest rate of all of your federal student loan debt? Enter your average interest rate (numbers only, do not include "%")
Are you legally married?
| Yours | ||
|---|---|---|
| Total Year PSLF Payments (SAVE) | ||
| Total Year PSLF Payments (Pre-2023 Plans) | ||
| Total Standard 10 Year Payments | ||
| Max Potential Savings With PSLF | ||
| After-Tax Salary Value (Per Year) | ||
Totals
Your Monthly Payment
Spouse's Monthly Payment
Note that if you tried to speed up your forgiveness date from the PSLF waiver opportunity, it could take several months for the full updates to be added to your account.
Additionally, the IDR Waiver one-time account adjustments have begun, and we expect adjustments to be completed by January 2025.
Maximizing the benefit of Public Service Loan Forgiveness involves filing taxes the right way (separate vs. joint), reducing taxable income through retirement savings, choosing the correct income-driven repayment plan, and more.
If you want to get an expert plan from our team to maximize your projected PSLF benefit, book a time with the button below. We are helping folks decide whether or not to switch to the SAVE plan.
What is PSLF and how does it work?
The Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program is available to borrowers who are working full-time for a qualifying employer. The program forgives the remaining balance on borrowers’ Direct Loans after making 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan.
PSLF eligibility requirements
Borrowers must work full-time for a United States federal, local or tribal government or nonprofit organization, have Direct Loans (or have consolidated their federal student loans into a Direct Loan), repay their loans under an income-driven repayment plan, and make 120 qualifying payments, to be eligible for PSLF.
PSLF Employment Certification Form
Submit a “Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Employment Certification Form” (ECF) every year as you work toward making 120 qualifying payments. This task is particularly important when changing employers to make sure you’re on the right track for PSLF eligibility. The information on the form is used to determine whether your payments meet the qualification criteria.
An official who has access to your employment or service records (and who your employer authorized) can certify your employment. This person is usually someone from your employer’s human resources department, but it could also be your direct supervisor or someone else authorized to certify your employment.
PSLF application process
Because you have to make 120 qualifying monthly payments, it may take 10 years of repayment before you’re eligible for PSLF. Once you’ve made 120 qualifying payments, however, you need to complete and submit the “Public Student Loan Forgiveness: Application for Forgiveness.”
You can complete your PSLF application online with the Department of Education’s PSLF Help Tool. Just remember that you don’t automatically receive PSLF. You have to submit the application and get approved first.
If you haven’t submitted the Employment Certification Form every year leading up to your PSLF application, you’ll need to provide proof that you made 120 qualifying payments. It’s best to submit these certification forms annually as you go along rather than going through the painstaking process of proving years’ worth of payments at the end.
When you submit your ECF, your student loans transfer to the PSLF servicer, who determines how many qualifying payments you’ve already made. The servicer will send you an official letter with the amount of submitted payments on record.
The number will be updated after you submit a new ECF or PSLF application that notes a new period of qualifying employment. You can also see your total amount of qualifying payments by logging into your account with the PSLF servicer and viewing your loan details.
How PSLF can work in your favor
Remember, you must repay your loans under an income-driven repayment plan to be eligible for PSLF. Four popular income-driven repayment plans are Income-Based Repayment (IBR), Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR), Pay As You Earn (PAYE), and Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE), formerly known as REPAYE. Regardless of their employer, almost anyone with federal student loans can apply for these plans.
There’s a big difference between repaying a loan on an IDR plan working toward PSLF and one that isn’t working toward PSLF. You could potentially complete the 120 required qualifying payments to be eligible for PSLF in as little as 10 years. By comparison, for example, the Standard Repayment Plan can take 10 to 30 years. Plus, if you’re on an IBR plan and don’t earn a high salary, your payment will be on the lower side during the life of the loan. If you begin to earn more money, you can stay in the PSLF program and use the cap on PAYE or IBR so you’ll still have a loan balance to forgive.
PSLF FAQs
Any U.S. federal, state, local or tribal government agency falls under the government employer category. These employers include the U.S. military, public elementary and secondary schools, public colleges and universities, public child and family service agencies and special government districts.
Eligible non-profits include organizations tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Organizations that are not tax-exempt under section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code but provide a qualifying service can also be an eligible employer.
There’s no income requirement for PSLF. However, your monthly payment amount under qualifying IDR repayment plans is based on your income. That means your income level during your time as a public service employee could determine whether you have a loan balance to be forgiven after you make the 120 qualifying payments.
No. However, only payments made while you’re working full-time for a qualifying employer will count toward your 120 payments. So, if you worked for a private, non-qualifying company at any point during the course of repaying your loan, any student loan payments you made during that time would not count toward the 120 you need to get PSLF. Once you’re employed by a qualifying organization again, however, your student loan payments will start to count toward your 120. Don’t worry — any payments you made before you worked for a private entity still count. You don’t have to start over from scratch.
If your PSLF application is approved, you’ll be notified that the rest of your eligible Direct Loan balance is forgiven, including outstanding interest and principal. Any payments made after your 120th qualifying payment will be refunded to you.
In the event your PSFL application is declined, you’ll get a notification along with the reasons you were deemed ineligible. You’ll have to keep making loan payments based on your Master Promissory Note terms.
Yes, but don’t forget you have to submit an ECF every time you change employers to prove your full-time employment with a qualifying employer while you make your 120 payments.
If you want a far more powerful copy of the PSLF calculator above, enter your name and email below, and we'll send you a copy you can download and use.
Studentaid.gov announced that you will not be required to recertify your IDR payments until at least 6 months after student loan payments restart. That means if your original recertification date was in October 2023, for example, you would have until October 2024 before you needed to recertify. For some professionals, such as physicians, that will create an outstanding planning opportunity. For others, you will want to compare the IDR payment under the new 2023 poverty line with what your servicer asks you to pay. We can help you make a plan to minimize your PSLF payments if you want a group that's made thousands of personalized plans.
