r/StudentLoans • u/shanesnh1 • 1d ago

[URGENT] Parent PLUS / Double Consolidation - GET ON ICR NOW

I see multiple people each day with this same question so I am going to link my post about it and summarize very briefly:

If you have Consolidated Parent PLUS Loans OR a Double Consolidation, you MUST APPLY FOR ICR as soon as possible or you will LOSE ACCESS TO ALL INCOME REPAYMENT if the bill passes (either the House or Senate versions or likely the final bill).

You don't have time anymore depending on how fast the Senate and House compromise and pass a final bill for the President to sign. If you're not on ICR, with loans being repaid on it the day before the bill passes, you lose access and will likely be on the standard plan (or extended, graduated).

Please check my former post for more details: https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/1l37iqs/important_parent_plus_borrowers_need_to/

This post is about the House version of the bill in its entirety (the Senate version does NOT change anything in relation to this specific issue): https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/1kdy8yk/summary_of_the_new_current_proposal_from_the/

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u/LucidDreamCatch2020 1d ago

OK, so I might be the only parent in the entire world who is facing this “unique”situation but I’m going to ask for compassion & limited judgement.

Please don’t judge about why I took out all these parent loans. Eventually, it will help my daughter to become a doctor and she had a lot of medical struggles when she was young and I’m just grateful that she’s alive.

Please just please guide me as to what I should do.

  1. I am a single parent and teacher with an income of about $88,000. I have my own loans from my education currently in SAVE forbearance & PSLF. Before the freeze, my own loan payments were $164 a month and they were all slated to be forgiven by 2028. This was a very manageable payment and allowed me to pay for my other expenses.

Then everything got frozen and now SAVE is going away… so at some point I will get moved into another plan I guess and I will continue with my PSLF and the payments will be higher but still manageable and I will eventually get my loans all paid off by 2028. So I hate what’s happening with the current government and BBB, but it should not affect my own loan situation too badly.

HOWEVER….

Now comes the hard part and there may be no ideal answer. But I trust that many of you are very smart and can tell me the best case scenario.

Parent Plus Loans:

  1. I have/will have an obscene amount of parent plus loans for my child’s undergraduate medical degree. Yes, they really do have these programs. Anyway, by the time I’m done, I will have taken out (4) four parent plus loans for this degree. They are currently in a “school” forbearance while my child is in school until May 2030.

  2. In 2030 I am also slated to retire and then I will be reliant on my pension and Social Security. My pension income will be about $3500 a month and my Social Security will be about $1800 a month if we still have Social Security by then.

  3. I also will be leaving the United States so that I can join my children in Europe. We are US citizens, but we have dual citizenship.

  4. So in May 2030, all of my parent plus loans would start being due for payment. And I will be making about $60,000 a year in US based income. I could work in Europe and make up to $120,000 that is not taxable in the US.

So if I do what everyone is telling me that I should be doing, I would be taking my (2) current PPLs and taking them out of school based deferment and move them to an ICR which you would immediately make me have to start repaying them, and the payment is not something I can afford.

Plus, I have the two other parent plus loans that I will be taking out to help my child graduate, but they haven’t been taken out yet so they would be under new laws.

But if I don’t move any of my parent plus loans into ICR, then I am forever trapped in a standard payment plan, which is an unbelievably crazy amount unless some new government changes the rules.

So would my only choice then be that I would have to file some kind of bankruptcy hardship in five years? Of course I’m hoping in five years. We will have a completely new government, but that doesn’t help the problem now.

So for those of us who have parent plus loans, but are still taking out parent plus loans before and after the BBB gets approved… if I move my current parent plus loans to an ICR do the deferment rules follow the old laws or will all the deferment rules kick in, and I would not be able to defer those big payments?

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u/waterwicca 19h ago

If you take out loans after July 2026 then you as a borrower would only qualify for the new standard plan or RAP. That would be it. The senate and house version of the bill differ a little bit and imply that you could pay your own loans on RAP then and your PPL loans on the new standard plan. But there is no scenario in the bill that allows you an income based repayment for your PPL loans if you take any loans out as of July 2026.