Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, in Washington. During the first two weeks of July, the Education Department began sending out notices to student loan borrowers in the SAVE plan to switch plans within 90 days. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
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The Education Department has started sending mass notices to student loan borrowers in the SAVE plan, giving them 90 days to move to a different repayment plan. If they don’t act within that timeframe, the notice warns, their student loans will be placed in a Standard plan.
“You must now select a new repayment plan” within 90 days, says the notice. “If you’re currently enrolled in the SAVE Plan, you will be placed on either the Standard Repayment Plan or the Tiered Standard Plan, depending on your circumstances.”
The notices are the culmination of the department’s efforts to scuttle the SAVE plan, a Biden-era income-driven repayment program that has been bogged down in litigation for the last two years. After Congress passed legislation last year sunsetting SAVE, and a federal circuit court effectively approved a settlement agreement in March that vacated the SAVE plan regulations, millions of borrowers with student loans in the SAVE plan are now being forced out. But there is still a significant amount of confusion about the timing and the process for the transition. Here’s what borrowers need to know.
Student Loan Borrowers Will Have 90 Days To Pick A Different Repayment Plan Once Notified
The notices, which the Education Department began sending out on July 1, only apply to borrowers who have student loans that in the SAVE plan, those who had applied to the SAVE plan, or those who got caught up in the SAVE plan forbearance due to their repayment plan selection on a now-obsolete version of the income-driven repayment plan application.
“A recent legal settlement ended the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, and it is no longer available to borrowers,” reads the notice.
The notice explains that borrowers with student loans enrolled in the SAVE plan will be placed onto a Standard plan if they don’t apply for a different income-driven repayment plan within 90 days of the date the notice was issued. Standard plan payments may be unaffordable for many borrowers, and typically will not count toward student loan forgiveness, including for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, or PSLF. Some borrowers may be placed onto the Tiered Standard repayment plan, which is a new plan that launched earlier this month.
Other borrowers who got caught up in the SAVE plan forbearance but were never officially enrolled in SAVE (such as those who applied for SAVE after a federal appeals court had already blocked the program via a nationwide injunction) “will be required to resume payments on the plan you were on before you applied for SAVE” if they don’t act within the 90-day period, says the notice.
Timeline For 90-Day Notices To Change Student Loan Repayment Plans
Importantly, the Education Department only began sending out the 90-day notices to borrowers on July 1. The department did not send out any notices prior to that date.
“Starting on July 1, federal loan servicers will begin issuing notices to borrowers, instructing them to exit the illegal SAVE Plan and enroll in a legal repayment plan within 90 days,” said the department in a March statement announcing the transition plan. “Borrowers who do not transition plans within the 90-day period communicated by their servicer will be automatically enrolled into either the Standard Repayment Plan, or the new Tiered Standard Plan that will be available beginning July 1.”
The department had sent out a series of mass warnings to student loan borrowers throughout the spring and early summer, telling them that they would soon need to move their student loans out of the SAVE plan. But these preliminary messages were not the official 90-day notices. The 90-day clock did not begin ticking for any student loan borrower until July 1 at the absolute earliest.
“No borrower will be required to move off the SAVE Plan until September 29, 2026 at the earliest,” conceded the Education Department in a court filing last month related to a legal challenge over its SAVE plan transition process. September 29 is exactly 90 days after July 1.
The department and its contracted student loan servicers have also confirmed that the 90-day notices will be going out to borrowers in batches over a prolonged period of time. Some borrowers may not even receive the notices until sometime in early 2027.
“Servicers will notify borrowers of their specific 90-day deadline,” said the department in its March statement.
The key takeaways for borrowers with student loans in the SAVE plan forbearance are:
- The 90-day clock does not begin running until you receive the official notice telling you to select a different repayment plan for your student loans.
- The earliest any student loan borrower received such notice was on July 1, 2026. Any notification issued prior to this date was not the official 90-day notice.
- Many borrowers have not yet received the 90-day notice, but they will eventually get it in the coming weeks and months.
Repayment Options For Student Loan Borrowers Leaving The SAVE Plan
“The SAVE plan has ended, but you have options,” says the official notice being sent to student loan borrowers.
Indeed, borrowers leaving the SAVE plan may have several income-driven repayment options to choose from. These options may include the Pay As You Earn (or PAYE) plan, which is preserved until 2028 under recent legislation passed by Congress; the Income-Based Repayment (or IBR) plan, which will be left intact; and the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which launched on the same date that the Education Department began sending out the first 90-day notices. Department officials estimate that hundreds of thousands of borrowers have already left the SAVE plan, with thousands signing up for RAP within the first 24 hours.
“Nearly 1 million borrowers have already left the defunct SAVE Plan,” said Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent in a statement on X on Tuesday. “If you’re still in the SAVE Plan, you can take action today. Head to http://StudentAid.gov, leave SAVE behind, and choose a lawful repayment plan that keeps you moving forward.”
But advocacy groups have warned that many student loan borrowers will have higher monthly payments under the other income-driven repayment plans than they had under the SAVE plan, which could lead to payment shock. And while RAP may be the next-most-affordable option for some borrowers, RAP will force them to remain in repayment for years longer than other options before they can qualify for student loan forgiveness. For these reasons, some groups are urging borrowers to remain in the SAVE plan forbearance for as long as possible.
“If you received a notification to leave SAVE on July 1st, you technically have a 90 day timeline,” said the Debt Collective, a national debtor’s union advocating for student loan borrowers, in a statement on X on Tuesday. “Our suggestion is don’t be so quick to rush out of SAVE. If you haven’t received a notification, we would also suggest not making sudden movements out of SAVE.”
Other advocacy groups are urging borrowers with student loans in SAVE to just carefully evaluate their options. While switching repayment plans sooner rather than later might make sense for some student loan borrowers who want to get back on track for payoff or loan forgiveness, other borrowers may want to remain in the SAVE plan forbearance until they receive the 90-day notice to change plans, particularly if they will have difficulty affording higher monthly payments.
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