For those with student loans, get ready to go back into repayment! After a few false alarms, the January 31^st date for the expiration of CARES Act provisions is rapidly approaching, and this one seems to be sticking.

As to be expected, there may be some bumps in the road.

If you are on an income-driven repayment plan, such as PAYE or REPAYE, you generally need to recertify your income annually in order to have your monthly payment recalculated. Many borrowers have been seeing varying recertification dates, with the earliest ones happening now and the latest in 2023. Who’s right? Good question…

The Department of Education, who runs StudentAid.gov, has put a notice on their website saying that the earliest borrowers should be asked to recertify their payments is August of 2022. If you have a recertification date that is before August of 2022, we highly recommend contacting your servicer to ensure that your date is correct.

Other borrowers are being told that they do not have to recertify until 2023, and in the meantime, their payments will be based on their last submitted tax return (2018 in many cases) until 2023! So hypothetically, a resident who was still in medical school in 2018 and therefore had an AGI of $0, could continue to make $0 payments that count towards PSLF and an IDR plan for another year and a half. Is this too good to be true? Maybe – call your servicer.

If there is anything out of the ordinary, or if you just want to double check anything, call your servicer. There is a lot of uncertainty right now, and the Department of Education does not seem to be on the same page as the servicers.