Student loan servicers started the clock on borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan. Ninety days to pick a new repayment option. Ninety days to read terms and conditions nobody will read. Ninety days to remember that Biden-era policy now counts as historical fiction.
The SAVE plan was supposed to be the good one. Lower monthly payments. Faster forgiveness timelines. A competent redesign of income-driven repayment that wouldn't collapse under its own bureaucratic weight within eighteen months. That worked out.
Servicers sent the emails. Borrowers opened them. Borrowers immediately closed them and returned to scrolling through投资 advice from people who think technical analysis works on assets with no price discovery mechanism. Because if you're going to ignore financial reality, might as well ignore all of it.
The alternative repayment plans are still there. PAYE. IBR. The old standbys that made everyone miserable before SAVE showed up to make everyone miserable in a different font. Pick one. They all lead to the same place. Twenty years of payments followed by a tax bomb your 2046 self will definitely be prepared to handle.
Some borrowers will miss the deadline. Not because they didn't get the notice. Because they've reached that Zen state where student loan emails trigger the same neural response as cruise ship spam. Delete without reading. Assume someone else will fix it. Wake up in default wondering why their tax refund got intercepted.
The real move is refinancing into private loans at 9% interest. Trade federal protections for the privilege of paying Sallie Mae until you're sixty-three. Bold strategy. Respected by no one. Exactly the kind of decision that separates traders who read headlines from traders who understand that student loans are non-dischargeable debt instruments immune to market sentiment.
Ninety days sounds generous until you realize it takes 91 days to reach a human at your servicer.
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