The SAVE Plan Is Gone: How to Pick Your New Student Loan Repayment Plan Before the 90-Day Clock Runs Out

If you have federal student loans, the ground just shifted under you. The SAVE plan, the one that let millions of borrowers make $0 or tiny payments while a court fight dragged on, is finished. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for a settlement that permanently ends it. So the forbearance is over, interest is back, and you have a decision to make on a deadline.
Here’s the good news. You’re not being thrown to the wolves. There’s a new plan, a couple of familiar ones, and some real math you can do to figure out which one costs you the least. Let me walk you through it the way I’d explain it to a friend over coffee.

SAVE was the most generous income-driven repayment plan the government ever offered. It capped payments low, and for a lot of people it wiped out monthly interest so balances stopped ballooning. Courts blocked it, borrowers got stuck in an interest-free holding pattern, and now the whole thing has been unwound.
Starting July 1, 2026, if you were enrolled in SAVE, your loan servicer began sending notices telling you to move to a different plan. You get 90 days to choose. Miss that window and you don’t get to keep coasting. You’ll be moved automatically, likely into the Standard Repayment Plan or the new Tiered Standard Plan, and that could mean a much bigger bill than you’d pick on your own.

The Repayment Assistance Plan is the replacement for most of the old income-driven options. The Department of Education pitched it as simpler, and it is, but simpler isn’t the same as cheaper for everyone.

Your monthly payment is between 1% and 10% of your income, depending on how much you earn. Each dependent you claim knocks $50 off that monthly payment. The minimum payment is $10 a month, so nobody pays literally nothing, but low earners pay very little.
RAP has two features I actually like. First, it waives your remaining unpaid interest every month as long as you make your payment on time. That matters more than it sounds. Under the old plans, roughly 3 out of 4 borrowers in income-driven repayment owed more six years in than they did on day one, because their payments didn’t even cover the interest. RAP stops that spiral. Second, there’s a matching principal payment. If your on-time payment doesn’t chip at least $50 off your principal, the government kicks in up to $50 to make up the difference.

Let me put real numbers on it, straight from the Department of Education’s own example. Take an unmarried borrower with no dependents, $35,000 in debt, earning $45,000 a year. Under the old income-driven plans, that person owed $176 a month, and their balance could still climb by up to $15 every single month even after paying. Under RAP, the payment drops to $150, $40 of unpaid interest gets waived, and they get the $50 principal match. So instead of watching the balance creep up, they watch it go down. That’s a real improvement for that borrower.
The catch? Forgiveness under RAP comes after 360 on-time payments. That’s 30 years. Older income-driven plans forgave balances after 20 or 25 years. So if you’re counting on eventual forgiveness, RAP makes you wait longer.

If your income is high enough that a percentage-of-income plan isn’t saving you anything, the Tiered Standard plan might be your move. Instead of cramming everyone into a 10-year payoff like the old standard plan did, this one sets your term based on how much you owe: 10, 15, 20, or 25 years.
Why does that help? Stretching the term lowers the monthly payment. The Department’s example: a borrower with a $30,000 balance owed $341 a month under the old 10-year standard plan. Under Tiered Standard, that same balance gets a 15-year term and the payment falls to $262. You pay more interest over time because you’re borrowing longer, but the monthly number is easier to live with.

Don’t pick a plan off a vibe. Run the numbers. Log in to your account at StudentAid.gov and use the Loan Simulator. It takes about 10 minutes, and if you consent to let the Department pull your income straight from the IRS, you skip the paperwork of uploading pay stubs.
One caveat before you lock anything in. The exact RAP and Tiered Standard terms can shift a little depending on your loan type and when each loan was first disbursed, so your real payment may not line up perfectly with the government’s example figures above. That’s exactly why the simulator beats any rule of thumb. It runs your actual loans, not a stand-in borrower. Treat the numbers in this article as a guide to how the plans work, then let the simulator tell you what your specific situation costs.
Here’s my rough rule of thumb. If your income is low relative to your balance, RAP usually wins because your payment shrinks and the interest waiver protects you. If you earn well and just want the lowest total cost, compare Tiered Standard against RAP directly, because a percentage-of-income plan can cost a high earner more. And if you’re chasing Public Service Loan Forgiveness, watch which plans still count toward those 120 qualifying payments before you commit.
One more thing on the timeline. If your loans were taken out before July 1, 2026, and you’re in a plan that’s being phased out, you generally have until July 1, 2028, to settle on RAP, Tiered Standard, or Income-Based Repayment. And yes, IBR is still on the table for those older loans. It didn’t go away with SAVE, so if it fits your situation better than RAP, you can choose it right up until that 2028 deadline. Don’t sit on the decision that long, but know you have room. Borrowers still in ICR or PAYE will see those plans disappear by 2028 too.

If you’re borrowing for school going forward, the rules tightened. Parent PLUS loans are now capped at $20,000 a year and $65,000 total per student. Grad students can still borrow $20,500 a year, but there’s a new $100,000 lifetime cap on grad borrowing. Plan your financing around those ceilings before you enroll, not after.

A student loan payment doesn’t live in a vacuum. When your payment jumps back from $0 to a few hundred dollars, that has to come from somewhere in your budget. This is where seeing everything in one place helps. The SuperMoney app lets you track your loan balance next to your spending, credit, and other debts, so when your new payment kicks in, you can spot exactly where to trim and whether refinancing your private loans (never your federal ones, if you want to keep these protections) makes sense.