PSLF Buyback: Reclaiming the SAVE Forbearance Months You Lost

Updated September 2026

If you’re pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness and spent 2024–2025 in the SAVE litigation forbearance, there’s a hole in your payment count: those months didn’t count toward your 120. For many borrowers that’s 12–18 missing months — more than a year added to the forgiveness date.

PSLF Buyback exists to fill exactly that hole.

What Buyback is

Buyback lets you make a payment now to “purchase” PSLF credit for past months that were spent in certain forbearances or deferments — provided you were employed full-time by a qualifying employer during those months. You pay what you would have owed under your income-driven plan for each month bought back.

Who it helps most

• Borrowers near the finish line. If buyback months would complete your 120, you have the most to gain — people have reached forgiveness this way.
• SAVE forbearance borrowers. The litigation forbearance is buyback-eligible time.
• Low-payment borrowers. If your IDR payment during those months would have been $0–$50, you’re buying full PSLF months for almost nothing.

How to file

1. Confirm your qualifying employment covers the forbearance months (submit/update your PSLF employment certification first).
2. Check your payment count on your StudentAid.gov dashboard and identify the gap months.
3. Submit the buyback request through your StudentAid.gov account (details here).
4. If approved, you’ll get a binding agreement stating the amount; pay it within 90 days.

The catch

Buyback requests have a significant processing backlog — it peaked near 89,700 pending applications in March 2026 and stood around 88,000 at the end of April, the first month ED decided more requests than it received. ED estimated 18,000–19,000 of those were duplicate submissions and removed them over the summer, so the real queue is likely in the 60,000s. Real-world waits still run well over a year — borrowers who filed in late 2024 were receiving offers in August 2026 — despite ED’s 45-business-day target. ED publishes no processing estimate, its court-ordered monthly backlog reports have lapsed, and there’s no way to check your status. The encouraging part: the approval rate on decided requests reached 96% in April 2026 — the process works; the wait is the problem. One more thing to check first: in August 2026 ED reduced some borrowers’ PSLF payment counts while correcting what it called coding errors and rolling back some credit granted under the earlier limited waiver and IDR account adjustment. If your count dropped, pull your own records, dispute it through your servicer and the FSA Ombudsman, and don’t submit duplicate buyback requests — they only clog the queue. You also generally must have 120 months of certified qualifying employment already on record for the request to complete forgiveness. If you’re only a few months short of 120, you may reach forgiveness through regular qualifying payments before the buyback is even processed — keep paying on a qualifying plan rather than waiting on it. If you’re mid-journey, document everything now — certify employment annually so the buyback math is ready when you need it.

Not sure you’re on a qualifying track at all? Check your PSLF eligibility first.