. If you’ve been repaying your student loans for at least a decade, you could be next in line — but you may need to consolidate before the April 30 deadline.If your loans aren’t on this list, you likely don’t need to take action to benefit from the IDR account adjustment.
Provide contact information for two references who can be contacted if the Education Department is unable to reach you. “Once you submit that application, there’s a whole behind-the-scenes process happening with the Department and any lenders, where they’re kind of making payments to one another,” Desjean explains. “Basically … the Department is buying your loans from whatever bank is holding them.”
The payment recount should be reflected in your account by July 1, at the latest, per the latest Education Department guidance.You could get some credit for past payments on direct loans if you miss the April 30 consolidation deadline — but not as much. Instead of getting payment count credit for the oldest underlying loan in your new consolidation loan, you’ll get a weighted average of the payment counts of all underlying loans.