Is Everything Blocked Now? | Student Loan Questions Answered

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Student Loan Planner Podcast. I'm Travis, and we're going to dive into a lot of stressful stuff today, but hopefully after you listen to it, maybe it's a lot less stressful. So the first thing to update you on is, if you go to studentaid.gov slash IDR, or if you go to the consolidation application, which it's kind of a longer URL, but I made a short link that's just studentloanplanner.com slash consolidate, it should redirect to the federal webpage where you do the consolidation, so if you go to either one of those URLs, they're grayed out, which means that you cannot click either on the demo or on the actual button to proceed in the application. Why do they do that? This Department of Ed is making its first Trump Department of Ed decision, and what they're saying is that the federal court ruled that, you know, the pay in the ICR plans were in the SAVE plan, and very unlikely that forgiveness would be able to be allowed through that statute, and so Department of Ed essentially wants to rework the entire application, probably to eliminate those options to apply for. They might say, oh my gosh, I need the pay plan, I want to apply for it right now, can I apply for it before it's too late, or I'm already on the pay plan, oh no, what does this mean for me? So I want to be clear here, right, like this is the Eighth Circuit kind of going off on its own into a very unexpected place that I don't really think it should be going, because if you really think about it, 30 years of precedent, you know, you might say, well I've done that before, well yeah, that's true, but this is, you know, an appeals court that, you know, even during the Trump administration, there was no challenges at all about the pay plan, there was no challenges in the Trump administration on the repay plan, right? And so to suddenly say now that, well the, you know, the Congress in 1993 didn't intend for any of these loans to be forgiven under ICR is kind of absurd. Now, you know, yeah, I don't know if that Congress thought that they would create the pay plan, for example, or the repay plan in the future, sure, they didn't anticipate that, but in terms of having forgiveness allowed under the ICR statute, you know, this court was like, well they should, you know, they said, you know, repayment, which means repay, and, you know, you've got 25 years to pay it all back under a formula that varies based off of the principal amount you have and the, you know, income that you have. Well, I would like to make this court write out what that means in a formula, hey court, you're saying things, your math doesn't make sense, math it please, because the reality is is if you try to say, well you've got to pay it all off in 25 years and it's got to be based on your income, and what if your income is never high enough to do that, well then like the only resolution would be default, and that doesn't make any sense. So essentially this court is saying things just from like a mathematical standpoint that just don't make sense, right, and it's pretty obvious that, you know, the court that we have here is the most, one of the most conservative courts in the country in terms of its ideological split, so that's what's kind of happening in terms of, you know, them coming down hard on these plans, really hard, and they're doing it in a, you know, because of the Biden administration. The Biden administration was foolish and they overreached. What I mean by that is if you have the current court composition that you've got, maybe you shouldn't piss them off, and let me explain what I mean by that. There was an injunction against the SAVE plan, they said the SAVE plan, you can't do it, this 8th Circuit Court did, and the Biden, you know, administration was like, okay, well, we're just going to call SAVE REPAY with the exact same terms and say that we updated the REPAY plan's terms to the SAVE plan's terms, we're just going to keep the program going, right? Look how smart we are. We figured out a way around this court's order, right? That was stupid. That was so dumb, because what happened was the court got angry, hey, you're trying to get around our authority here, we said no SAVE plan, you're trying to do it anyway, right? Just kind of how they announced the SAVE plan, as when the Supreme Court said we're going to block cancellation, what did Biden say? Hey, they're not going to stop me, I'm going to come out, you know, I'm going to do this plan B, right? It just really agitated the courts, I think, and you know, when you do that, it's like fine to do that, right? Sometimes people want to say bad things about the courts because, you know, people would believe they're very partisan or political, for example, but it's like, does it help? You know, did it help anything for borrowers that they went out and tried to run around the 8th Circuit on this SAVE injunction when it went out? No, it didn't, it backfired, because now we've got, you know, more plans under threat because the courts needed a broader legal reason to stop the SAVE plan than just we don't think the SAVE plan should be legal, so they had to come up with a broader legal reason, so their broader legal reason was, let's say that the entire ICR statute never intended to forgive us. Now, in terms of PSLF borrowers, we're unclear about what this means, specifically what it says is you can't get forgiveness while enrolled in an ICR plan, so that means you could get all the payment credit, switch to IBR at the last second and still get forgiveness. In terms of PSLF, we don't know if you can get forgiven while enrolled in a pay-as-you-order ICR plan directly, but we have seen people after this injunction get PSLF forgiveness in those plans, so we have seen people processed for forgiveness while enrolled in ICR plans on PSLF, and ICR plans are pay, repay, ICR, and SAVE, right? So we have seen people get that forgiveness, and the question is, you know, like, will that continue, will the interpretation continue to be that way? So, you know, so in addition to the online applications being blocked, for the first time ever, the current version of the IDR application, the paper application, has also been taken down. So that just went down, it's, if you go to the URL for it, it says not found, and, you know, people are wondering, well, should I submit the old version of the application that has expired? I would say no, I would say we have to be patient and see what happens here, it's probably going to take a few weeks. The, you know, reality is they can't keep it down forever, and the court has directed the lower court to make a ruling instead of all of this waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting business that we've been going through. So when that lower court makes a ruling, we're going to know a lot. And the lower court ruling, frankly, could be a lot more moderate than we expect, because, you know, the first judge in that eastern district of Missouri made the ruling, only limited a subset of the SAVE plan, instead of the other stuff, you know, you sued way after the fact, that doesn't make any sense, right? And then the 8th Circuit kind of made a bunch of excuses for the plaintiffs, saying like, oh, like, that's because the final rule wasn't going into effect yet, and they didn't realize the implications of it, and that, you know, that's, that's kind of ridiculous. I mean, it's like, it's all politics, right? Like, there's political calendar, April before presidential election year, you're trying to stop stuff, you're trying to score points, right, like, I mean, the timing is like, evident. You know, there's no suits about the IDR waiver, no suits about the PSLF waiver, why? Because, you know, it was too wonky and technical, it wasn't exciting enough politically to sue over. So, you know, those are some initial thoughts. We do have a lot of listener questions, like, maybe more than we can get to, but I'm going to try to get to as many of them as possible. So let's, let's listen to some of the listener questions next. Hey, Travis, it's Elisa from New York City. I'm at 298 payments, and I recently applied for ICR. I don't qualify for IBR. Now, given this new administration and the court challenges, it seems to me that it's less likely possible that I could get forgiveness after making two more payments. Do you think that I should start making payments again, or wait a little bit longer to see how this flushes out? Thanks so much. So in this case, I think you have to figure out a way to get onto IBR somehow. It could be as simple as, like, taking a break from work, like, you might be able to just switch jobs and then apply to the IBR plan, truthfully stating your income has changed. So I think that that would be the best suggestion that I have, because if you're on ICR, and you're at the 300 payment count threshold, you don't qualify, so you can't get forgiveness now. You could wait for the court decision to see if the court decision goes in your favor, but my suggestion would be to figure out a way where you could, you know, dramatically lower your income temporarily, truthfully state that your income has changed in a downward direction, and then use alternative documentation of income to sign up for the income-based repayment program. So that's probably the only option. So let's take as many questions here, let's take another one. Hi, I am currently on the SAVED loan program, and I'm not making any payments right now. I just was wondering if I should just stay with that until we hear more. I owe about $55,000 in student loans, and my income is $48,000, and I have an adult daughter that lives with me. So I just am kind of worried, I'm not sure what I need to do, if I need to change my program right now, or what, but thank you for any information. So for this one, I think you got to think about, well, what is your poverty line? So poverty line for a family of two is about $20,000, so 1.5 times that's $30,000. So if somebody makes $48,000, that means that $18,000 of income would have a payment tacked on, right? So that, you know, if you're on the new IBR plan, it will be 10% of $18,000, so that's $1,800. If you're on the old IBR plan, it's 15% of $18,000, so it would be, what is that, $2,700 a month, something like that? So either way, it's something between $150 a month and like $220-ish a month. So that still probably gets forgiveness, and so the question would be, do you think your income is going to go way up in the future? Do you want to get forgiveness? Is how close are you to forgiveness, right? I think you would run all that math and say, do I want to continue getting credit towards forgiveness under the IBR plan at this time? And if you can afford the payment, and you do want to get forgiveness in your, you know, at least a few years into forgiveness, I would, yeah, I would get off of the SAE plan, and I would get on to the IBR plan. So let's take another question. Hi, Travis. My name is Shannon. I've been paying on my student loans since I graduated in 1990. That was with my bachelor's degree, but then afterwards I got a master's and a doctorate, and then about eight years ago, I completed a master's degree in social work. So I've been paying and borrowing and getting more degrees really pretty much since 1990. I consolidated in March, and I went from 26 loans to two loans of $108,000. And I'm working toward the PSLF. I currently have 109 payments toward my 120. I have not heard what my final IBR count is. I've been trying to get that information from Mojila and from the Department of Ed, and nobody seems to know. So I don't know where I'm at with that, but so I'm trying to figure out. My plan had been that I was going to just sort of sit tight, wait until, because I'm in the SAE forbearance, so nothing is happening, but I was going to try to do the buyback when I got to my 120, which will happen in May of 2025. But then the Trump administration got elected and has come in, and I am really worried that by May, who knows if they'll be even doing the buyback. So I'm thinking maybe I should just jump off the SAE forbearance and start paying and doing my 11 months that way. My income is higher than it was when I went into, you know, the 2020 pause. I didn't have a job then, and now I do, but it's in social work, so it's not like I'm making millions of dollars, but it's substantially more than zero. And then I found out on Mojila's website yesterday that they have me down to be recertifying in March. So it feels like everything is coming up in the next couple of months, and I have to make decisions. I have not yet done my taxes for 2024. So I'm just trying to figure out what you think would be my best bet. Should I sit tight, hope to be able to do the buyback in a few months, or should I jump ship, try to find the cheapest IDR so that I can start paying on those 11 months and get caught up that way? I just, I'm so close that I just, I don't want to mess it up at this point. So whatever advice you have, if you have any ideas on this one, I would really appreciate it. Thanks for everything you do. I love listening to your podcast every week. Thanks. So that was a little bit of a longer one, but I think that it's a good question. So I think that, you know, you need to think about your own risk tolerance here. So if you like, you know, are stressed out of your mind by this and you're just so tired, then I would say when you can get on IVR, which right now you kind of can't because the online application is down. So when the online application is up and you have the ability to get on IVR, I would probably file your 2024 taxes separately, depending on your income setup, but probably that, and then you probably want to be trying to get on the IVR to get those last 11 or so payments just in case. I mean, I would be a little risk averse. I'm just being honest, right? I think buyback is going to work probably. But if I'm a social worker, if I have a limited income, if I am in stress out of my mind about these loans, like the buyback program is an executive action. The PSLF program with IVR is in statute. So the second one is way safer, and the PSLF buyback could very well work and we don't have to wait that long to find out, but they could still slow up the processing of it. Meanwhile, you're like waiting around, wondering what the heck's going on. Eventually you have to, you know, apply for something else, right? So it's like, you know, I think that I would decide, you know, if you were like rock solid going to be a social worker in this job with a very stable income the rest of your career, then I might say do buyback just because it's like probably going to work. But if you were just like, I'm tired of this, I want to be done, I want to get credit. Like you could also do like a switch over to IVR, make payments for like three or four months and then you would get to the 120 payments with the buyback anyway, so you can still do buyback, but just be on IVR actually getting credit, right? So those are some thoughts on that. Let's do another one. Hey, thanks so much for taking questions. I actually have two for you. The first is that back in 2012, I was an AmeriCorps volunteer and for about seven months I entered into a forbearance based on financial hardship rather than electing to make what probably would have been $0 payments during that time and qualifying for PSLF. So after that, I went to grad school and later I consolidated my loans. My understanding is that based on one of the temporary forms of relief that Biden provided for, I could have gotten those seven months where I was in forbearance counted toward PSLF based on the fact that I was an AmeriCorps volunteer. But at the moment, the studentaid.gov has not counted them. I have put in an appeal, but that was months ago and I haven't heard back. So I'm curious if you have any sense as to whether there's any world in which I can get those seven months where I was an AmeriCorps volunteer to count toward forgiveness for really both sets of loans, the undergraduate and the grad school. The second question has to do with the buyback provision. My debt is $80,000 and my salary is about $120,000. Not my AGI, but my annual salary. So my concern is that I might be getting to a point where I'm worried I'm going to stop meeting the requirements to meet the financial hardship eligibility. And if that's the case, then, you know, really, I think what's going to make the difference for me is whether or not I can buy back these months where the saves can, where we've all been in this administrative forbearance. If I can't buy those back, then I'm probably going to be getting into territory where my income might be too high to qualify me for financial hardship. Whereas if I can buy them back, then I'm probably going to be OK. Because my loans, in theory, could be given or given as early as the end of this year, depending on those seven months that, you know, I talked about earlier and depending on the buyback. So I just wanted to get your thoughts and maybe a little bit more insight on, you know, making just on, I guess, determining the financial hardship aspect of things. So thanks very much. So I think it's too late to get the seven months added from AmeriCorps. I think at this point, like, if it was added, it would be a miracle, you know. And I think that the getting the partial financial hardship side of things, you know, if you have to have PSLF buyback work out, you know, to be able to get PSLF, then you just need to roll the dice. Because it's still a way better probability and benefit than, like, refinancing would be. So you've got to wait out the PSLF buyback all the way just to see what happens with that. The other thing I'd say is, you know, if you ever do change jobs, that is an opportunity to get enrolled into IBR by having your income be decreased, right? If you are able to do, you know, creative things with your income, like max out retirement savings or something, you might be able to fall right underneath that partial financial hardship if you do your taxes in a really smart way, right? So those are some of the ideas that I've got. There are other groups out there, just to be full disclosure, that tell people to do things like set your 401k withholding percentage to 100% and then submit a pay stub that reflects, you know, zero income because you put 100% of your paycheck, that paycheck, into a 401k plan. I think that that kind of a strategy is, in my opinion, not acceptable. I think that that could get you in a lot of trouble if there was ever an audit or ever a review of, like, PSLF income certification, right? And that could potentially get you in big trouble, I think. So, you know, somebody that's desperate might do something like that, but I don't recommend that. So I think that the most above board way to do it is, like, you ever change your job or maybe you try to take some sort of strategic, you know, FMLA leave or something like that to separate yourself from your job for two or three months to truthfully state that your income went down, right? Like, in other words, you want it to be, whatever you say to get that partial financial hardship, to get that last month of credit you need to get forgiveness, you want to be able to defend it and say that it was truthful even if it's, like, pushing the boundaries a little bit. So let's go ahead and take another question. Hi, my name is Stacey, and so I retired from public school teaching last May, and I went back to working part-time around 18 hours a week as a public school teacher and continued my side hustle of teaching at a non-profit school where I work around 12 hours a week. So with these two incomes, I hit that 30 hours of part-time work needed to qualify for public service loan forgiveness. But all my loans, they were Parent PLUS loans, and I was able to do that consolidation loophole that made them direct loans to qualify for PSLF. But I read somewhere that I don't qualify for the IBR plan because my loans were originally Parent PLUS loans, but I could still transition from SAFE to Income Contingent Repayment, ICR. I'm only 18 payments away from PSLF. I don't have any eligible buyback periods. And with the recent ruling against the SAFE plan, I'm still not clear if I would get PSLF or not under the ICR, as I'm not allowed to get on IBR. So I'm just curious, what are your thoughts about that? So as of now, ICR is a qualifying repayment program for PSLF, and still is. So in terms of, if you did the double consolidation correctly, you should have access to IBR still. So I think it might just need to be kind of a specialist approach in trying to get you on to IBR eventually, if you ever need to be. But if you only have 18 payments left, I would probably just try to ride that out with ICR if you can't seem to get on to IBR, and then you should get PSLF on schedule. So let's take another question. Hi there. I just have a question related to the pay plan. And I just want some clarification, because I seem to be hearing some conflicting information. My name is Emily, by the way, thank you so much for taking the time to support our knowledge related to the mess that is student loans. So my question related to the pay plan is that, in order to apply to be placed in the pay plan, if you were in the save plan, as I was, do you have to have been on the save on the pay plan before to be able to apply? For whatever reason, when I am looking at the programs that I'm eligible for, it says I'm not eligible for pay plan, only IBR. Pre the save plan, I was in the repayee plan. So I would love it if we could get some clarification on if we needed to have been on the pay plan once before to switch into that plan, now that the save plan is dead, essentially. So you don't need to have been on the pay plan before to get it now, in theory. The online application actually said completely incorrect information, I know you guys will be shocked by that, but they literally never removed the language that said the pay plan is officially phased out as of July 2024. When they unblocked the pay plan in the waning days of the Biden administration, they just never got around to taking that language off the online application. So the pay plan is still eligible for anybody who has their first loan after October 2007, and another loan that came out after October 2011. So those are the eligibility rules for the pay plan, and if you paid off all of your loans before taking out your first loan after October 2007, that's also a qualifying event for the pay plan. But this court, with their anti-pay plan ruling, they haven't struck the pay plan down, but they've said you can't get forgiveness while enrolled in the pay plan of a 20-year version of pay. So the current administration might just take that and say, well, that's the same thing as saying that it's illegal. So that's the thing that we need to be watching in the pay plan, is whether or not it's going to get fully struck down, or if it's going to stick around, and you just can't get forgiveness on it, but you can get credit towards IBR, which is going to be real bizarre, but could actually help some people. So if you're a pay plan person, I think you need to be paying a lot of attention right now. Just be patient, wait, get ready for a lot of legal mess that's coming down the road. But you should be able to get on it. The question is, is it actually going to be beneficial? So we'll talk about that a lot more in the future. So let's listen to another question. Hi, my question has to do with the student loan, quote unquote, tax bomb that I've heard of. I've heard after you are on a income-driven repayment plan that your forgiven balance can be taxed as income. My question comes because I have been on an income-driven repayment plan for the last seven and a half years. I have 13 years and six months left on my income-driven repayment plan. And of course, as you know, the interest continues to rise on my large loan balance. So my question is, what does that look like for someone who is required to pay a city tax, a state tax, and a federal tax by living in Cincinnati, Ohio? So yeah, my question is just mainly about that tax bomb, and will I be required to pay taxes on a forgiven amount after my 20 years of payment? Thank you. So the American Rescue Plan, the stimulus bill that Biden did in 2021 in March, that actually made student loan forgiveness tax-free until the end of 2025 when that tax bomb returns. And we're going to have to see whether or not congressional Republicans extend that tax treatment or if they decide to let that expire. My bet is that they would let that expire, which means that student loan forgiveness that's non-PSLF would be subject to taxes again. Now, what would happen is you would get a 1099-C, like a miscellaneous income kind of thing. The 1099-C would state your income as if it was a bonus, and that would be taxable at the federal, state, and local level, depending on your federal, state, and local rules. There are some states, like Minnesota, that do not tax student loan forgiveness in their statutes, so that would not be taxable at the state level, even though it would be taxable at the federal level if that was the case. So remember that tax bombs are able to be saved for. You can put money away into a brokerage account, build up that money over time, and then you'll have that money ready to go at the end of the period. And it's usually a lot cheaper to prepare for the tax bomb, even, and make your student loan payment than it is to pay the loans off directly. So that's why we always suggest that if somebody's going to potentially have a tax bomb, you can prepare for it. It's a great idea to prepare for it because you can just use the money for retirement or something else if you don't end up actually needing it. So let's take another question. Hello. Just a quick question. I'm on track for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. I'm about to hit my 10 years at the end of the month. I'm thinking about doing the buyback program. I'm about short, I think, eight months. I've been certifying every year, but now with the, you know, the saved deferment and all that, these months haven't been counting, and it's kind of adding up. So I received a letter from the Department of Ed stating that I could opt out of the saved program and switch to a different income-based repayment program, and that the processing months would actually count towards PSLF. So I'm kind of not sure whether I should take advantage of those processing months in order to reduce the amount I would eventually buy back, or do you think I should just go ahead and do the buyback program now and pay everything straight up? So if you could let me know your thoughts on this, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. So again, this is something complex. It depends on your risk tolerance, your income, your debt, your, you know, desire to switch careers. There's a whole bunch of things that go into this. So in general, if you're super close and you have a really low IBR payment, I'd probably get an IBR. If your IBR payment would be enormous or you wouldn't qualify or you have a high risk tolerance or you're going to stay in your job no matter what for the long term and you're content however long it takes, then that's a little bit more of a pro-buyback kind of sentiment, right? So those are kind of the things that you would need to think through to decide what to do. But yeah, if I can secure a very low IBR payment, I'm probably switching. So another question. Not being facetious and not making a joke of it, but if there is no more Department of Education, then there's nobody to pay for my loans. So doesn't that mean my loans are forgiven? Questions. Ha ha ha. Um, no. There will be a Department of Education. It's in the statute. Secretary of Education is listed 35 times in the income driven repayment regulations and applications and laws and stuff. So they can move a lot of stuff out of Department of Ed. They can tell Department of Ed to slow walk everything and do hardly anything. But they do have to do a minimum level of stuff because it's in the statute, so they don't have a choice. So keep in mind, there's a lot of stuff in politics that's like messaging, right? Oh, we're going to shut down this department. And then there's stuff that's reality, like shutting down USAID. So USAID, my understanding was that it was created via an executive action or something like that and was not as statutory as Department of Ed is. And so that made it possible to, you know, cut a lot more of USAID than Department of Ed. So, you know, something like that is kind of like apples and oranges, like there's some things that they're able to dramatically cut, there's other things they're not able to dramatically cut. You know, if you think about like firing federal employees, like they went after all the ones that were probationary federal employees, which gave them less legal protections. They weren't able to go after, yet at least, as hard all of the broad federal employees civil service, right? Now they're going to keep trying, of course, they're going to test it out in the courts. But like, you know, you have to think through about, I think that The Economist had an interesting headline that was like, you know, it was something basically about like, you know, this president were worried about respecting the laws, but, you know, but he sort of is so far or something like that. I mean, I don't know, regardless of your politics, right? Like any president seems these days seems to test the laws, right? Like, both parties test the laws, and the laws, you know, are subject to the judges that interpret them. Right. And we do have a very conservative judiciary at the moment. But, you know, I would say in a lot of things, I think you'll be surprised at what doesn't change. So that would be my prediction is you'll probably be surprised at what doesn't change with some of this stuff with the Trump administration and Department of Ed. So let's take the next question. Hi, Travis. Big fan of the show. I've also been listening since December, and it's been really helpful, especially as I near PSLF qualification. My question is about submitting final employment certification and a buyback request. I'm currently in the save forbearance and will be eligible for PSLF come June. I've certified employment through July of 2024, then change jobs to a new qualifying employer that I've yet to certify. When I look at my PSLF forgiveness on student aid, August shows up as employment not certified. But then starting in September, the payment status changes to ineligible and then shows no 2025 information at all. So I guess I'm concerned that I may run into a problem when I submit my employer certification where those ineligible months won't count toward my remaining payments. So my question is, will certifying that employer or submitting the PSLF buyback request address that or will I be denied because those months are showing as ineligible for the save forbearance? And a secondary strategy question is if I should test the waters and certify my new employer now and then just recertify the last couple of months, or if I should wait and certify my current employer when I reach the 120 payments in June. I really appreciate all the insight and any thoughts that you could provide. Thanks again. There is absolutely zero harm by just recertifying your employer credit. Always feel free to do that. This person should do that. You should do that. Everybody should do that if you're going for PSLF. So the goal there would be to send an employer certification form in for all these ineligible months and then when you hit that 120th month, when you would have had that payment drawn, wait until after the payment would have been drawn and submit all that employment certification and those ineligible months. The reason why one of those dates is showing eligible and not eligible is because they put on like one or two months of processing forbearance in that switchover to the save forbearance and they did that specifically in the Biden administration to try to create two additional months of qualifying credit that otherwise wouldn't have been there. So that's why it shows eligible and then suddenly doesn't show eligible in like August or September. It's because of that processing forbearance. They did that to try to get people a couple extra months of credit. So for the buyback provision for this person, definitely the first thing you have to do for buyback is to certify all your employment to make sure you're at 120 qualifying employment months. So no harm at all in doing that and then when you hit your total 120 months, go ahead and certify that employment. So let's take another question. Hi, Travis. Thanks for all the great information you've been giving us. I have a question about loans that are forgiven under the IDR plans. I understand that the amount that is forgiven is reported on a 1099-C and that amount is added to your income for that year. Then you have a tax liability or what you call the tax bomb that is determined by your tax bracket for that year. My question, however, is about what happens if you die during repayment. From what I have read, it sounds like the balance of the loan is forgiven upon death, but is that amount non-taxable or could your estate be responsible for the tax liability? So the loan forgiven due to death and disability is tax-free. So that changed in the Trump tax cuts on disability. I actually would have to double check on the death provisions, but it's been tax-free due to death and disability since 2017. Since the Trump tax cuts were partly the thing that changed some of the tax treatment on that, I would anticipate that that's going to continue. The really awkward way of saying this is the quote-unquote die-with-your-loan strategy is a very viable strategy if you are a older person and you are just honest with yourself about Social Security actuarial tables. Somebody who's a male who's 75 has a 50-50 chance of making it to 85. That's just math. If you're 75, your chance that you're going to make it to 95 is maybe 20%. So there's a much greater than likely chance that you are not on earth anymore as an individual during your 25 years of repayment because let's say you have Parent PLUS loans or you're an older borrower. There's all kinds of things that you could do, I think, to try to do a die-with-your-loan strategy in the absolute disastrous smash-the-glass-in-case-of-emergency kind of situation. What would that look like? You could do maximum forbearance, you could stretch the loans out as much as you could, you could take on additional loans and go back to school and borrow a bunch and consolidate again, which would give you an additional three months of forbearance. You could switch from your income-driven plan after the 24.99th year, you could switch over to a graduated extended plan with a super low payment. Or you could go into default and have your IBR just garnish your Social Security at 15%. So there's all kinds of strategies in a case where somebody's a middle-income individual or a lower-income retiree that you could handle your student loans even if the student loan apocalypse happens in terms of available repayment plans. So obviously nobody wants to do that, but there's all kinds of choices where you don't have to destroy all of your finances and destroy inheritance for the next generation and just burden your family with taxes or something like this. You don't have to worry about any of that, so that's at least a good thing. I loved all the questions today. If you want to ask questions like this, just go to studentloanplanner.com slash voicemail. Again that is studentloanplanner.com slash voicemail and you can ask questions like this that we can feature on a future episode. I'm imagining we're going to have a ton of questions with the IDR application not being accepted, probably a ton of questions when the lower court ruling comes out on the save plan, so I'm definitely looking forward to those questions. And then if you want to just get a refresh on your plan or if you've never gotten a plan from us before, now's a good time for that because there's a lot of plan A, plan B, plan C kind of planning opportunities right now. So if you want to get a custom plan, go to studentloanplanner.com slash book, and then of course if you're a SLP Wealth client, just reach out to your financial planner to refresh things. So studentloanplanner.com slash book and if you want to ask a question to the pod, studentloanplanner.com slash voicemail. Thank you all so much, have a wonderful rest of your day.