Lender Skips One Month Annually: Impact on IBR Forgiveness?

[SeanSpicerSays]

Anyone have thoughts or similar experience with this?

My student loan servicer literally skips billing me for one month each year. I called them about this and they told me that they don't bill the month that my IBR plan is regenerated after I re-certify. So I actually only make 11 payments per year (I am on auto pay and caught this only after 2.5 years of repayment).

I asked them about the impact that this would have on my (hopefully) anticipated forgiveness. Customer service agent says this is how they do it for "everyone" and it won't impact forgiveness because forgiveness is based off of actual years of repayment, NOT number of monthly payments made.

Anyone else experience this?

This opinion seems to be contradicted by Q28 of this doc, copied below:

28.What does “after 20 or 25 years of qualifying repayment” mean?

This means that you will qualify for forgiveness of any remaining loan balance after you have made the
equivalent of 20 or 25 years of qualifying monthly payments, and after at least 20 or 25 years have
passed.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/sites/default/files/income-driven-repayment-q-and-a.pdf

Appreciate your opinions on this!

[kayvent]

As an aside, if possible I'd be more concerned with raising your income and not needing IBR than if this disqualifies you.

Imagine if you had a child in nine months. They would be starting or finishing their post-secondary school before the forgiveness of your loan activates.

[SeanSpicerSays]

I hear you, but I've run the numbers and PAYE + forgiveness makes the most financial sense, by far.  I'm much more concerned about maxing retirement accounts and stashing money into liquid assets.

Anyway, I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has run into this issue.  It looks like a delay in processing the IBR recertification causes a month of no bill from the servicer.  This has happened each time I recertify, meaning it would delay forgiveness by almost two years, and cause the tax bomb to be substantially larger.

For anyone out there who wants to check their own situation, I have Great Lakes as my servicer.  I'm attaching a screenshot of what my account menu looks like (December is the month in question).