Successful buyback. Loans forgiven.
People's updates and success stories have been enormously helpful while I've eagerly waited for loan forgiveness. Sharing my story and timeline in case it is helpful to others.
- I was on track to make the 120th payment in September 2024.
- But in June 2024, I got stuck at 116/120 for two reasons: the transition to new Mohela platform and the court injunction on the SAVE payment plan.
- Mohela stopped my auto payment in June because of the platform transition, putting me on an administrative forbearance. I set my auto payments to be withdrawn on the 28th of the month. I had not been paying close attention to the platform transition and how that would affect me, so when I noticed my auto payment did not go through, I made a manual payment in early July for the month of June. FSA and Mohela did consider that payment in early July to be a payment for the month of June, according to the PSLF payment tracker, but it did not count towards my PSLF progress.
- My auto payment withdrawal did not resume in July so I made a manual payment again on July 29. Payment did not count toward PSLF progress.
- Then I got placed in general forbearance due to the court injunction on SAVE.
- Applied for buyback 9/27/24 (applied to buy back months only in 2016 and 2017). To quote u/sparty1224, I was ON SAVE but bought back months pre-SAVE.
- Received buyback offer on 2/4/25.
- Made the buyback payment the same day I received the offer.
- Received the loan forgiveness eligibility letter 2/21/25. (I think this is what people refer to as the golden letter: "Congratulations on reaching 120 qualifying payments for Public Service Loan Forgiveness.")
- Now I'm on the 30-business-days wait to hear back from Mohela.
- UPDATE: My loans zeroed out on Mohela on 2/25/25!
EDITED to correct that I got stuck at 116 starting in June, not July. Also made additional edits for clarity. And added my 2/25/25 update.