I'm no sure about that. I think he might have been toying with us. After a few more questions, he said he will continue to pay whatever the lender says he owes--which I took to mean that he will continue to use the IBR. He wasn't exactly clear.
He showed up on Reddit/r/personalfinance and I called him out on his bullshit. He's basically mincing words and trying to promote his blog for whatever reason.
It appears he's using IBR but with no real income his repayment will be zero.
Regardless he can do whatever he wants and I can call him an unethical immoral leech on society.
Hey, it's good to see you again from Reddit/r/personalfinance!
For the record, I'll continue on the IBR. I'll be repaying these loans for ~23 more years. Some years zero, other years a few thousand dollars, maybe more if my investments do well and I spend more money. And then I'll owe a fat tax bill on any amounts forgiven at the end of year 23.
Since I retired 5 months ago, I've ended up with a fair bit more income than I expected (investment returns, revenue from my blog, other projects, and being invited to do some freelance writing at a very nice compensation level given the amount of work involved). With what I know now, there's a distinct chance we'll be paying more each year on my loans than what I expected, but it's really dependent on income. I make more, I pay more. Mathematically, it's a tax (to me).
And I don't really feel like rehashing the "ethics of IBR" since there's a thread 200 posts long already devoted to it. :) To be fair to us, we never used the degrees that the loans were for. That's why our incomes weren't high enough to repay the loans in full. We probably made a mistake getting the advanced degrees given the cost and loss of income during those years of school. We didn't really "benefit" from the education.
Our system says "get an advanced degree, we got your back. And if you end up doing something different in life, we can work out a deal on repayment". That's just the way the system is set up. If you don't like the results of the system, I'd suggest (as I did in the thread on ethics of IBR) examining the system and fixing what's broken, not going nuclear on those participating in the system per the bargain that was offered.
On a side note, I'm a little humbled that I caused a major wave of disruption here a few months ago. Wow!