Mar 1, 2024 By Karen Mansfield 2 min read

Students who may be eligible for the Biden administration’s SAVE plan – including tens of thousands of federal student loan borrowers in Pennsylvania – should be on the lookout for an email with information about the income-driven repayment (IDR) plan.

SAVE, which stands for “Saving on a Valuable Education,” was unveiled in June 2023, and borrowers may be eligible for early loan forgiveness if they switch to the plan.

The announcement comes on the heels of the administration’s recent forgiveness of nearly $1.2 billion for almost 153,000 borrowers under the SAVE Plan. About 5,600 borrowers in Pennsylvania received relief.

Eligible borrowers will not have to take any action to receive loan forgiveness other than switching their repayment plan to the SAVE Plan, according to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Communications and Outreach.

IDRs link a borrower’s monthly payment to their income, lowering their financial burden.

The SAVE plan was designed to fix some problems with older IDR programs, such as allowing interest to snowball on a borrower’s debt.

All borrowers enrolled in SAVE can receive forgiveness after 20 years or 25 years of repayments – depending on when a borrower first took out the loans, the type of loans they borrowed, and the IDR plan they’re enrolled in – but the White House has developed the shorter 10-year forgiveness period for people with smaller balances.