They Said My SAVE Forbearance Months Still Count Toward My IDR Forgiveness Clock. They Don’t.

Fact-checked by Steve Rhode, consumer debt expert since 1994 • Last reviewed August 6, 2026 • Every claim below links to a primary source.

I keep seeing a version of this belief in student loan forums and in my own inbox: “My loans got shoved into forbearance because of the SAVE lawsuit — not my fault, so at least those months are still ticking toward my forgiveness, right?” It’s an understandable guess. It’s also wrong, and for income-driven repayment forgiveness specifically, it’s an expensive place to be wrong, because the mistake is invisible and there’s no program waiting to fix it later. Nobody sends you a letter that says “this month didn’t count.” You just find out years later that your finish line moved — and for IDR, it stays moved.

Well, Actually…

Here’s the part almost nobody explains clearly: forbearance and repayment are not the same thing, and forgiveness programs only count repayment. Under the law that governs both income-driven repayment forgiveness and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a “qualifying payment” is a scheduled monthly payment made while you’re actively in an approved repayment plan — not a month where the government simply told your servicer not to bill you. The Congressional Research Service put it plainly: “Periods of deferment or forbearance do not count toward the 120 monthly payments required to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), nor do they count toward the 20- or 25-year repayment periods under the income-driven repayment (IDR) plans.” That’s the default rule for forbearance that never got a special waiver — and SAVE’s forbearance never got one, so the litigation that put you there doesn’t change how either clock works. Congressional Research Service, Federal Student Loan Debt Relief in the Context of COVID-19.

So where does the confusion come from? Mostly from real memory of something that did work differently: the COVID-19 payment pause. That forbearance was a deliberate, announced exception — the Department of Education explicitly waived the rule and credited those months toward IDR forgiveness, and toward PSLF for borrowers who kept working a qualifying job through the pause. So did a one-time “IDR Account Adjustment” that ran through 2023 and 2024. Both were real, both helped millions of borrowers, and both are exactly why people assume forbearance-counts-toward-forgiveness is just how things work now. It isn’t. Those were special, time-limited fixes Washington chose to apply — not the standard rule, and not something that automatically extends to whatever forbearance comes next. SAVE’s forbearance never got that waiver, and the door on the one program that could have retroactively covered it has already closed.

Why You Were Told This

Nobody is lying to you on purpose — most of this confusion is honest pattern-matching gone wrong. Borrowers who lived through the COVID pause remember, correctly, that those forbearance months counted toward both programs. People who got the IDR Account Adjustment remember, correctly, that old forbearance got credited retroactively onto their IDR clock. So when SAVE forbearance showed up and felt like the same kind of “the government paused my loan through no fault of my own” situation, it was natural to assume the same rule applied. It didn’t, because Washington never issued the equivalent waiver for SAVE’s forbearance the way it did for COVID’s — and unlike PSLF, IDR never got a second-chance program either. That’s a policy choice, not an accident of law, and nobody sent a plain-language notice explaining the difference.

The other reason this myth spreads is that “wait it out, it’s counting” is a much more comforting story than “every month you wait is a month you lose — permanently, if you’re on the IDR track.” I understand the appeal. But comfort isn’t the same as accuracy, and this is one of those places where the honest answer requires you to act, not relax.

What to Actually Do

• Check your actual payment count at studentaid.gov, don’t assume it. Log in and look at your IDR qualifying-payment history (or your PSLF payment tracker if you’re pursuing PSLF). See exactly how many months are credited and how many were forbearance.
• If IDR forgiveness is part of your plan, get out of forbearance now — there’s no buyback waiting for you later. Unlike PSLF, missed IDR months have no recovery path today. I already covered the mechanics of the July 2026 transition and the 90-day window in The SAVE Plan Is Ending — You Have 90 Days to Avoid a Bigger Bill. Every month you delay in forbearance is a month off your 20- to 30-year clock that, as things stand in August 2026, nothing brings back.
• Weigh IBR against RAP with your real forgiveness math, not the old SAVE math. And one warning the servicer may not volunteer: switching repayment plans is not the same thing as consolidating your loans. Consolidation creates a new loan and can re-average or disturb the qualifying-payment count you have already earned. It will not retroactively add your forbearance months back, so do not consolidate hoping it will fix this — and if anyone suggests consolidating as a remedy here, get your current qualifying-payment count in writing from your servicer before you agree to anything. I broke down the full menu of replacement plans — and why IBR is currently the most legally durable choice — in SAVE Plan Ruled Illegal: What 7 Million Borrowers Need to Do Now.
• If you’re already at 120 months of qualifying PSLF employment, look into Buyback — but go in with eyes open about the backlog. Apply through the PSLF Reconsideration process at studentaid.gov, confirm the lump-sum amount before committing, and expect a wait measured in months, not weeks. This option does not exist for IDR.
• Don’t confuse this with the interest question — they’re two separate problems. I wrote separately about what happened to your balance during SAVE forbearance (interest resumed August 1, 2025) and the PSLF-specific pause, in They Said My Student Loans Were Paused. They Lied About What Happened to the Balance. That post is about your money and your PSLF status. This one is about your IDR clock. Both are real, and neither fixes the other.
• Pay no one a fee to check your payment count or file a buyback request. Every step here — checking your tracker, submitting a PSLF form, requesting buyback — is free at studentaid.gov. A company charging you to do it is charging you for something you can do yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my time in SAVE forbearance count toward my IDR forgiveness clock?

No. IDR forgiveness (the 20- to 30-year balance cancellation, depending on your plan) requires qualifying payments or specifically-credited periods, and SAVE’s litigation forbearance was not swept into the credited categories. The only mechanism that retroactively credited forbearance was the one-time IDR Account Adjustment, which is closed — and unlike PSLF, there is currently no buyback-style option for IDR forgiveness.

Does SAVE forbearance also count toward PSLF?

No, not automatically — same underlying rule. Forbearance months are not qualifying payments under those rules either. The one partial fix, PSLF Buyback, only works once you’ve already reached 120 months of qualifying employment; there’s no equivalent for IDR. I cover those mechanics and what happened to your loan balance in a companion post, They Said My Student Loans Were Paused. They Lied About What Happened to the Balance.

What is PSLF Buyback and can I use it to fix this?

PSLF Buyback lets you pay a lump sum, generally what you would have owed under an IDR plan, to have specific ineligible forbearance or deferment months counted as qualifying payments toward PSLF only (not IDR). It’s only available once you already have 120 months of qualifying employment. As of an April 2026 federal court filing, roughly 88,000 buyback applications were pending (a figure that includes an estimated 18,000–19,000 duplicate requests), with only 6,870 decided that month — a pace that would take roughly a year to clear the current backlog.

Why did my COVID-era forbearance count, but this SAVE forbearance doesn’t?

Because the COVID pause was a deliberate, announced policy exception — the Department of Education specifically waived the normal rule and credited those months toward IDR and PSLF forgiveness. SAVE’s court-ordered forbearance never received an equivalent waiver, so the default rule — forbearance doesn’t count — applies to both.

Is the IDR Account Adjustment still open — can it still fix my SAVE forbearance months?

No. The Department of Education has said the one-time payment count adjustment is complete. It credited qualifying time only through when it was applied to each borrower’s account, generally in 2023 or 2024 — before most of the SAVE litigation forbearance occurred. There is no reopened version of it pending, and no buyback-style substitute has been created for IDR.

If I switch from SAVE to IBR or RAP right now, do my past forbearance months retroactively start counting?

No. Switching plans starts your IDR clock moving again going forward — it does not reach back and credit the months you already spent in forbearance. As of August 2026 those months remain uncounted toward IDR forgiveness, and there is no buyback to recover them the way there is for PSLF. I say “as of” deliberately: the litigation behind all of this is still open, so if a court or a future rule creates a retroactive fix for IDR, that would change this answer — and I will update this post if it does.

Should I wait to switch plans until I understand all of this, or just switch now?

If forgiveness — IDR or PSLF — is part of your plan, switching now is almost always better than waiting, because every additional month in forbearance is another month that doesn’t count, and for IDR specifically, there is no way to buy that month back later. That said, run your own numbers with the Loan Simulator at studentaid.gov before you commit, since your monthly payment and interest situation also change when you switch.

This is what I’m seeing after thirty years of helping people with debt — take it as one informed perspective, not a directive. Only you know your full situation. Look at your real numbers, and make the choice that serves your future. Nobody gets to decide that for you — not a servicer, not a company, not me.