SAVE Plan Is Dead — Here's What It Actually Costs PSLF Borrowers
PSLF borrowers with kids and middle incomes ($70K–$150K) face the steepest hit from SAVE's repeal — up to $6,072 more per year under the replacement RAP plan.
Who Actually Gets Hurt When SAVE Disappears
The SAVE plan is gone, and if you're working toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness, your first instinct might be panic. Slow down. The real damage from SAVE's repeal is highly uneven — and for a large share of PSLF borrowers, the monthly hit is smaller than the headlines suggest. A single borrower earning $50,000 a year would pay $167 per month under the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) versus $59 under SAVE — a $108 monthly difference that stings but lands at roughly 2.4% of income. A married physician earning $400,000 filing separately faces an extra $3,516 per year under RAP, which sounds alarming until you realize that's less than 1% of their gross pay.
“"RAP would cost $6,072 more per year than SAVE. Her payment increase would amount to 5% of her income." *— Travis Hornsby, CFA®, CFP®, Student Loan Planner*”
The Middle-Income Family Problem
The borrowers who take the hardest punch are middle-income earners with children, specifically households pulling in $70,000 to $150,000 a year. Here's why the math turns ugly for them: SAVE calculated your deductible income using 225% of the federal poverty line, scaled to your family size. RAP replaces that with a flat $50 per dependent per month. Run those numbers for a pharmacist at a nonprofit hospital earning $120,000 a year, filing separately, with four kids — her monthly payment jumps from $294 under SAVE to $800 under RAP. That $6,072 annual increase represents a 5% income hit. For a family already stretching a budget across four children, that gap is real money, not a rounding error.
PSLF Buyback Gets More Expensive Too
The damage doesn't stop at monthly payments. PSLF buyback — the mechanism that lets you purchase qualifying months you missed while on a non-qualifying plan — now gets calculated without SAVE as an option. That means the same disparity you see in monthly payments shows up in buyback costs. Low earners and high earners will find RAP-based b
This issue draws on reporting and data from Student Loan Planner.