Months spent in the SAVE forbearance do not count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the Education Department’s Federal Student Aid office says. For borrowers working toward forgiveness in government or nonprofit jobs, that means the time can pass with no progress on the 10-year clock.

Federal Student Aid, the department’s student aid office, states it directly on its SAVE Plan update page: “Time spent in the SAVE forbearance is not eligible for credit toward PSLF.” The same page says those months do not provide credit toward discharge under income-driven repayment either.

What a forbearance month is worth toward forgiveness

Public Service Loan Forgiveness has a simple count. A borrower must make 120 qualifying monthly payments before the balance can be forgiven. A month in SAVE forbearance is not one of them, so a borrower who sat there for a year has the same number of qualifying payments as before. Twelve months is one-tenth of the 120 required, so even a single year in forbearance can push the finish line back by that much.

The forbearance also is not free of cost. Interest has been charged on SAVE balances since August 1, 2025, according to the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance project. Balances grow while forgiveness progress stands still.

The people most exposed are public-service workers, meaning people in government and nonprofit jobs who were placed in SAVE and have not yet moved to another plan. Each of them needs the same three facts: how many months were spent in forbearance, whether a servicer notice has arrived, and what date the choice of a new plan is due.

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Buyback is the route for getting some months back

Federal Student Aid says borrowers may be able to buy back certain months spent in an ineligible deferment or forbearance, and that this becomes possible once a borrower has 120 months of qualifying employment. The Student Loan Borrower Assistance project describes the same limit, saying buyback is for borrowers with 10 years of qualifying employment.

A borrower-side attorney, in an explainer posted October 4, calls PSLF Buyback the only way to convert SAVE forbearance months into qualifying payments. Buyback means paying for the months, so it is a cost decision as much as a paperwork one.

The 90-day clock and the plan a borrower lands in

The SAVE Plan is ending. Federal Student Aid says a court order ended it in March 2026, and servicers started sending notices to SAVE borrowers on July 1, 2026. The department’s March 27 announcement put the number of affected borrowers at 7.5 million and promised each at least 90 days to pick a legal repayment plan.

Borrowers who do not act within the 90 days get a final 30-day notice, Federal Student Aid says. After that, they are placed in either the Standard Repayment Plan or the new Tiered Standard Plan. That placement matters for forgiveness, because the agency also says payments under the Tiered Standard Plan do not count toward PSLF.

Federal Student Aid says servicers will notify every SAVE borrower before the end of 2026, so some 90-day windows are still open and others closed in late September for borrowers whose notices went out on July 1. Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in that announcement that borrowers who take out a loan must pay it back, a signal that the wind-down is not optional.

The same announcement lists the choices: the Standard plan, the Tiered Standard Plan with fixed terms of 10, 15, 20 or 25 years, the Repayment Assistance Plan, which launched July 1, 2026 and bases the monthly payment on income and number of dependents, and the existing income-driven plans. Federal Student Aid adds that a servicer must give notice at least 21 days before the first due date on the new plan.

The older plans are on a timer as well. Federal Student Aid says the ICR and PAYE plans end no later than July 1, 2028. A borrower who chooses one of them is picking a plan with a known end date, which is one more reason to write down the choice and the date it was made.

Steps while the notice clock runs

• Find the servicer notice and write down the date it was sent, then count 90 days from it.
• Keep a record of every month spent in forbearance and every servicer call.
• Ask the servicer, in writing, which new plan counts toward PSLF before choosing one.
• Track PSLF progress on StudentAid.gov, the official site for the program.

Federal Student Aid’s SAVE page is the starting point for the rules, and the open question for each borrower is how many forbearance months they have, and whether buyback fits the situation. Those answers come from the servicer’s records and the borrower’s own employment history, not from the forbearance notice.

Juggling servicer calls, notices and deadlines on student loans?

A missed servicer deadline or a plan choice made on a phone call nobody wrote down can cost months of progress that cannot be recovered cheaply. Borrowers in the SAVE wind-down have dates, notices and phone conversations stacking up at once.

The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit is not a PSLF guide, and it does not say which repayment plan fits. It gives a debt inventory, call log and deadline tracker for exactly this kind of paper trail, plus the debt-validation steps for anyone contacted by a collector about a loan.

Get the debt inventory, call log and deadline tracker for student loan servicer contacts →

More Financial Reading

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• 15 Ways Retirees Are Tapping a Record $14.9 Trillion in Home Equity

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.