Thanks for the thoughts everyone.
IBR is available to those who do not work in government/non-profit jobs, but the length of the loan until forgiveness is much shorter if you are in government/non-profit (10 years I believe).
If I decide to go after the loan, I will likely consolidate and refinance.
My monthly payments are not touching the principal, but the interest does not compound.
While I understand wanting control over my debt and being able to shed it in 8 years versus another 20, I’m still hesitant for a few reasons: (1) paying the loan back will kill my retirement investment for those 8 years, (2) I believe refinancing the loan will include the current interest in the new loan principal; (3) if I consolidate and refinance at a better rate, I lose the ability to go back to IBR and (4) if I lose my job, change careers, become disabled, etc., then having the IBR option would be nice over the monthly payment of a standard loan.
The other IBR thread was useful. It seems most of the opposition was being voiced by a few people who hated the idea of the government program and were against using it for moral and emotional reasons. I didn’t see much criticism of it on the financial side, although the OP of that thread made about $45k, so it was a clearer case for taking the IBR route than my situation.
Another point that I didn’t mention regarding IBR is that the IBR monthly payment is calculated on AGI, so maxing out my investment accounts also lowers my monthly payment.
Also, if I lose my job, it is likely that my monthly payments would drop to 0 and I would still be making progress towards the 20 years I have left on the loan. I guess it is even technically possible to achieve FIRE with money still owed on the loan, just with making $0 monthly payments during retirement. Then, the only debt would be related to the loan forgiveness in year 25. And, although I do not expect it to happen, there is still an outside chance congress will try to exempt student loan forgiveness from being treated as taxable income.