When changing your Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) contributions. three dollar limits that apply The annual limit  is $20,500. This limit is to the combined total that you can contribute in 2022 to your Traditional and Roth TSP combined. This limit does not apply to Traditional TSP contributions made from combat pay. The next limit  is $6,500 on additional catchup contributions for those turning age 50 or older in 2022. So if that's you, can make total TSP contributions of up to $27,000. For military in a combat zone, your contributions toward the catch-up limit must be Roth. And you can't contribute toward the catch-up limit from incentive pay, special pay, or bonus pay.

The third limit  is the $61,000 Annual Addition. Its the total amount of all the contributions that can be made to your TSP a year. This limit is includes your employee contributions and for you BRS military and FERS civilians the Automatic 1% Contributions, and up to 4% Matching Contributions. It doesn't include catch-up contributions. The annual addition limit affects mostly our military service members who can contribute tax-exempt pay earned in a combat zone up to this  limit.

Next decide how much your can and want to contribute. Remember with ROTH TSP, you pay your income taxes now, up front on your contributions. So you will have less money paycheck each pay period when you contribute to ROTH TSP than if you contribute to Traditional TSP. YFor more info listen to Episode 28 Meet ROTH and Episode 30 To ROTH or Not to ROTH.

Civilian employees usually designate a dollar amount to contribute from each paycheck, while our service members will need to elect a percentage. FERS civilians and BRS military, in order to get your full match, you need must contribute at least 5% of your pay in every single pay period to get your full match. If you hit one of those limits before the end of the year, you give up that match from your pay for the rest of the year. Check out their online Elective Deferral Calculator .  You’ll need your most recent LES and guess how many pay periods it will take your personnel center to make the change to your pay. For Military and DoD civilians, MyPay says, it will be effective at the beginning of the next pay period. So enter 0 for this box. 

The calculator will give you the new amount you can contribute each remaining pay period if you want to maximize your contributions for 2022. Pick what you can afford, or that max number from the website, whichever is lower for your contribution.

Next use your electronic payroll system to change your TSP contributions. For  military service members and DoD civilians thats myPay. For other for federal employees there are other payroll systems, like Employee Express, EBIS/GRB, LiteBlue, and NFC EPP. 

Generally, feds will use enter the dollar amount and service members a percentage of your pay. Military can keep this simple by contributing from your base pay. Take the monthly TSP contribution you want to make, divided by your monthly base pay, times 100

Then go to myPay and log in. Under the “PAY CHANGES” heading, select the “Thrift Savings Plan (TSP)” link. Then click the yellow pencil icon to make a change to your TSP contribution. Enter your changes in the pop-up window. Enter that percentage in the base pay box for either Traditional TSP or ROTH TSP or split between both. There’s boxes to enter percentages for other pays  as well.

Then click Continue to review then Submit.

Merry Christmas and welcome back to the podcast. I hope yo’ve a had a bit of a break to spend time with the ones you love. Here’s a special shout out to our military and civil servants that are spending another holiday far from home and family. We love you and we’re thinking of you. Thanks for being there for us.

Today’s podcast is a short one. It’s a time for rest, fun, and joy. So believe it or not today’s podcast is on how our military service members can change their income tax withholding and change your Servicemen's Group Life Insurance (SGLI). 

Whaaat? REALLY? Why? Who wants to think about this at Christmas. Especially if you’ve been in awhile you know almost any personnel action you have to do that’s related to your pay is a pain, can go bad fast, involves who knows what paperwork and chasing done the right person to hand it to.

So this Christmas, my gift to you is the ‘EASY” button for changing your SGLI and W4 withholding. It’s the Christmas miracle of military paperwork. If you are getting a big refund each year or a nasty tax surprise at filing time, you can instruct your employer to change your withholding amounts by filling out a new W4. I did an entire episode on the W4 Withholding form in Episode #40 Withholding. So refer back to that to see what information you need to update your withholding. And I’ll put a link in the show notes to the IRS Form W4 too. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

For our serving and retired military and DoD civilians it is, no kidding, easy. You log into your MyPay account at  https://mypay.dfas.mil/#/. The information you input directly on the MyPay website is the same as the W-4 form. On MyPay look for the Pay Changes category and under that you can chose federal withholding or state withholding. Fill in the blanks online and its all done online in a few minutes.

The other Christmas miracle easy task is changing your SGLi. Our serving military now can make changes to your SGLI online using the the SGLI On-Line Enrollment System (SOES). Go to MilConnect (link again in show notes) https://milconnect.dmdc.osd.mil/milconnect/ 

On the MilConnect main home page you’ll find front and center a “I want to…” section and Manage my SGLI is an easy to see choice. Once you click that button, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your DS login, your CAC card, or your DFAS myPay credentials. Your choice. You’ll se a ‘If you have had a life event” choice. If you’ve gotten married since you joined the military, or divorced, had children, or a previous beneficiary has passed, now is a good time to relook how much coverage you have and who you have listed as beneficiaries. You can change your amount of coverage and beneficiaries  all on-line, oh so easy.

And that’s it for today! If your end of year to-do list or New year’s resolution includes finally updating your income tax withholding or SGLI coverage. Hop on it. So quick and easy. A military Christmas miracle.

If you have cash savings that you will not need for at least a year, consider investing in US Government I Series Savings Bonds. Check out the Treasury Direct information page for Series I Savings Bonds: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ibonds/res_ibonds.htm#irate  The I Bonds you buy between now and April 22, 2022 will earn you at least 3 1/2 percent interest over 1 year. After that you should reevaluate and consider redeeming them if other cash savings rates are better.

The interest that the I Bonds pays has two parts. The first part is based on a bond interest rates when you purchase your bond . This interest is fixed for the life of the bonds which is 30 years, unless you sell it first. This fixed part rate for is now 0%. 

Now the second part is a floating interest-rate. So you know that if you invest now, that the first part is gonna be 0%. But the second, floating rate is based on inflation and changes every six months in November and April. We had an inflation spike in 2021 . Because of that recent spike in inflation the floating rate for bonds purchased through April 2022 is 7.12% annualized. What this means is for those first six months you'll earn 3.56% on your bond which is half of the annualized rate. Then the floating rate will change for the second six months. The floating rate could also drop to zero if there is no inflation. But even if that happens you would still have a total of 3.56% return for one year.

You can buy up to $10,000 in electronic I Bonds now for calendar year 2021 and up to another $10,000 for calendar year 2022 after January 1st. The bonds are backed by the federal government and it guarantees you will get you money back, plus the interest. You will pay federal income tax on the interest when you redeem the bond, but they are exempt from state tax. You cannot redeem I Bonds in the first year. And if you redeem within 5 years of purchase, you will forfeit the last 3 months of interest earned. The unusual combination of recent high inflation and low general interest rates make the return on I Bonds you purchase between now and the end of April 2022 a pretty good deal compared to other places you can stash your cash.

If you are interested, you buy electronic I Bonds directly from the US Treasury online for amounts from $25-$10,000. You purchase these online directly from the Treasury at https://www.treasurydirect.gov/global_open.htm  Each person can buy up to $10,000 in electronic I bonds each calendar year. To open an account you will need your drivers license, Social Security number, and bank routing and account numbers for the electronic transfer of funds and you can designate one beneficiary for your bond.

You can also buy I Bonds as a gift for someone else including minor children. That person would also have to have a treasury direct account. More information is here: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/planning/plan_gifts.htm

There are also paper I bonds they can only be purchased with a federal income tax refund. You can use up to $5000 of any refund on your federal taxes to purchase these paper Io bonds. More information at https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/faq/faq_irstaxfeature.htm And this $5000 limit is in addition to the $10,000 a year electronic I Bond. You would need to file IRS form 8888 with your tax return to do that.

If you’d like more information on bonds in general, check out Episode 53 Bonds. And for an overview of paces to safely invest cash listen to Episode 39 Stash the Cash. Have a wonderful Christmas and we’ll talk again next week.

Today's content comes directly from  Brian O'Neill’s recent blog post Top 10 TSP Quirks You Need to Know.  Brian is a fellow Military Financial Advisor Association member , former Air Force fighter pilot, and Certified Financial Planner who writes a great weekly blog with a fighter pilot twist. Thanks, Brian.

If you’ve ever compared the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP)  to a civilian 401(k), you probably noticed the TSP has quite a few quirks:

1. Minimum balance: As long as you leave at least $200 in your TSP when you seperate from service, you can keep your TSP account open.  This is great because you never know when a change in employment or the tax law will make it advantageous to roll money into the TSP. 

2. Accepts rollovers: Except for a Roth IRA dollars, you can roll a Traditional IRA, and most other employer plan (e.g., 401(k)) funds into the TSP.  This can be great for simplifying your roster of retirement accounts.
3. Three Withdrawal options after separation:
Fixed or life-expectancy-based installment payments. For installments of less than 10 years, you can rollover the distributions to an IRA.  Single withdrawal: The minimum is $1,000 and you can only do one every 30 days.  Purchase an annuity. This locks in a fixed stream of payments for life, but you forfeit any right to leave the annuity balance to your heirs.

 4. Roth or Traditional withdrawals: You can choose Roth, Traditional or pro-rata withdrawals.  If you have contributions from a combat zone, your contribution is not taxable but the earnings are. Withdrawals from your Traditional balance will always be pro-rata from pre-tax and after-tax dollars.

 5. Processing delays.  Along with the military and civil service human resource bureaucracy delays, the TSP can be pretty slow processing any request.  Plan ahead, it’s not an ATM.

6. Spouse rights. If you choose to receive your TSP as a separately-purchased annuity, your spouse will need to consent to anything other than a 50% survivorship feature.

7. Death Treatment: Your balance will go to your beneficiaries on file with TSP, and NOT according to your will. And you must use form TSP-3 to change the d default beneficiaries.  A surviviing spouse's TSP account is automatically invested in an age-determined Lifecycle Fund. A non-spouse beneficiary can't keep the TSP account and will need to receive the funds in an Inherited IRA. If your beneficiary then dies, the TSP will pay the balance directly to that beneficiary’s beneficiary allot once, potentially creating a “tax bomb.”  If you inherit a TSP account, roll it to an Inherited IRA so a successor beneficiary keeps the tax-advantaged status.

8. The G-Fund. The G-Fund invests in special government bonds that its guaranteed to never lose principal value. But the G-Fund is usually the lowest performer of the 5 core TSP funds.  It can make sense as part of a portfolio, but usually is  NOT all.

9. Withdrawals are pro-rata from all funds. You can’t take a distribution from only the G-Fund or C-Fund, for example. A withdrawal is pro-rata across all them.  For a work around  after your withdrawal comes out, log into TSP and rebalance your funds to the allocation you want to keep. 

10. Roth RMDs. A Roth IRA does not have a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD).  Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and the both Roth and Traditional TSP all require you to start taking RMD every year starting age 72. Evaluate moving of Roth TSP dollars into a Roth IRA prior to 72.

For you military and federal employees out there, TSP has a detailed notice that provides great info and includes a chart and explanation of how to calculate your RMD yourself. I’ll put a link in the show notes https://www.tsp.gov/publications/tsp-775.pdf 

The simplest way to calculate an RMD is to go to investor.gov's online RMD calculator https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/required-minimum-distribution-calculator 

You need two key pieces of information. How old will you be on December 31st and what was the value of your Traditional TSP, 401k, and/or IRA at the end of last year. Hopefully, figuring out how old you will be at the end this year is pretty easy. To find the value of your account at the end of last year, pull up your end of year statement.

The main thing to remember about RMDs is that they are mandatory for Traditional IRAs, Traditional TSP, and Traditional 401k. RMDs now start at age 72 and must be taken every year. The dollar amounts are dictate by the IRS. RMDs are taxable income. And There is a very stiff penalty if you don’t take the full required distributions. So you lose a certain amount of control over how much and when those retirement savings are taxed. This may not be a big concern if those RMDs don’t push you into higher income tax bracket. 

But if they will push you into a higher tax bracket, there are some strategies you can consider to minimize the tax impact. You could work past age 72, contribute to ROTH retirement accounts now instead of Traditional accounts, and do ROTH conversions is years you have lower income (like between stopping working and receiving social security or a pension). Just remember with ROTH accounts you must pay the income tax upfront for the benefit of tax-free withdrawal later. And don’t delay your very first RMD into the second year if that will push you into a higher tax bracket.

Also you can take your total RMDs for several IRAs from just one of the IRAs. But you can’t do that with other retirement accounts, like the TSP or 401k. And each spouse must take RMDs from their own retirement accounts, even if you file jointly.

Today I we're talking about real financial planning.  It's not hard to find financial advice. You can read books, look on the Internet, rumors, ask that crazy uncle.  But I'm talking about a professional that has your best interest at heart of everything they do.  The Certified Financial Planner Board describes financial planning as “looking at a client's entire financial picture and advising them on how to achieve their short- and long-term financial goals. From saving for education and planning for retirement to effectively managing taxes and insurance, financial planners develop valuable relationships with their clients to provide them with confidence today and a more secure tomorrow.”  A good financial planner takes in all your information, does the math heavy lifting for you, and then comes back with a plan on how to achieve you goals. This holistic approach is good financial planning, and will give you the "What and the How" to help you accomplish your stated goals.  When you seek out financial advice, your should absolutely look for this as a minimum. 

But you don’t have to settle for just “good”. A real financial planner takes the time  to explore your “Who and your Why”. They listen to your story, your passions, your way of doing things, and your fears. Who and what is most important to you? Why? They explore with you the life you want and what keeps you awake at night. Everyone has a different relationship with money. And we don’t check that at the door when we head into a meeting to discuss our financial goals.

Personal financial planning is personal. A financial plan developed from an short interview or questionnaire and review of your documents may result in a clear, detailed road map to a great financial destination. But is that your destination? Is it the best journey for you? Do you see yourself really carrying out this plan? Did you planner explore options, what ifs, or possible other paths with you? It takes time and most of all it takes great listening. When you walk out of a meeting with your financial planner or advisor you want to be confident they know what they are doing and that they are bound to put your best interest first. But you also need to know you were really heard. That your financial plan isn’t just a good financial plan. It’s YOUR plan. It’s the best plan for you and you see yourself in it.

If you’ve been thinking about getting some financial advice, you have choices out there. Most good financial planners offer a free introductory call or meeting, which is your chance to see they they might be a good fit for you. Ideally, they ask some open questions and really listen. If it sounds like a sales pitch, it probably is. And you can shop around. There are planners that you can hire by the hour, or for a specific project. Others like me work with clients on an ongoing basis to answer questions along way and reorient as your life’s journey evolves. Many advisors expect to manage and invest your money for you. Others like working with do-it-yourselfers by providing advise you can carry out yourself. I do both. 

But finding a real financial planner comes back to you. Do they hear you? Do they invest the time to explore your who and your why? Do they “get” you and do you see yourself in the advice and planning they give back. If not, move on. You deserve better and it’s out there for you.

Here's some links to help your search for a real financial planner. My website, the Military Financial Planner Association, XY Planning Network, and the National Association of Personal financial Advisors.

Today we’re looking at things you should consider before the end of this year. If you single and have less than $40,400 taxable income in 2021 or $80,800 if married filing jointly you’re in the 0% capital gains tax bracket. You have a capital gain when you sell an asset, like property, stocks, bonds or mutual funds, for more than you paid for it. So this may be an opportunity to sell assets that have grown in value,  pay 0% taxes on that profit and reinvest into something else. For more info on the capital gains tax check out Episode 44.

If you saving for college in a 529 account, you may be eligible for State Income tax deductions or credits. Some sates will even add or match contributions for taxpayers with modest incomes. Check out your states 529 account website for rules and details. 

If you haven't maxed out your 401k or TSP contributions this year there's still time to increase your savings. For 2021 the max is $19,500 a year or $26,000 if you are 50 or over. At least save enough to get your  full match. For BRS military and FERS federal employees, that's at least 5% of you annual income.

If you are single with an Adjusted Gross Income less than $125,000 or Married Filing Jointly with under $198,000 of income, you can contribute earned income to a Roth IRA. And a non-working spouse can also contribute to a ROTH IRA as long as your working spouse has enough earned income. You contribute money to Roth IRA after you’ve paid tax on it. Then it grows tax-free. It's a great way to take advantage of being a low tax bracket now to save something, grow overtime, and be tax-free to you in retirement. You can contribute up to $6,000 a year to an IRA or $7000 a year if you’re 50 or older for this year through April 15, 2022. 

If you  will be in a higher income tax bracket when you retire, consider doing a Roth conversion. You take money from a traditional IRA, 401k, or TSP, pay income tax now on the  withdrawal, and deposit it in a ROTH 401k or ROTH IRA. You cannot covert a traditional TSP into a ROTH TSP. You can convert a Traditional TSP into a ROTH IRA. Conversions must be completed within 60 days of making your withdrawal to avoid penalty. And It is best to use cash to pay the income tax on the conversion, instead of using retirement savings to keep your savings growing and avoid possible early withdrawal penalties. ROTH conversions can take a while, so if you want to do one for 2021, don't delay. To learn more about ROTH accounts listen to Episode 28 Meet Roth, Episode 29 Roth IRA, and Episode 30 To Roth or Not to RotH.

Did you get a raise or a bonus or your spouse start working this year? Did you owe federal income tax  or get a big refund last tax season? Then take another look at your federal income tax withholding to make sure you don’t end up with a large tax bill or a refund at the end of next year. The IRS has a great online tool to help you determine how much withholding you should have and print out a new W-4 to your employer. https://apps.irs.gov/app/tax-withholding-estimator

If you do not itemize your taxes you are eligible for a tax deduction for cash charitable contributions you make this year of up to $300 if your single or $600 if MFJ. Save your receiptsand make the gift before the end of the year.

If you have a Flexible Savings Account you may be able to carry over unused benefits from this year into 2022. Check with your particular plan. Federal employee with a FSAFEDS account, can carry over all remaining funds into 2022. But you must re-enroll in the same account(s) during Open Season,  Nov 8th to December 13th this year. If you fail to re-enroll, you forfeit all your unused funds. Note though, this benefit carryover only applies to Health Care FSAs. You cannot carry over any balance left in a 2021 Dependent Care FSA.

If you served on active duty in the military and then become a federal civilian employee, that military time may count as time in service for calculating your FERS or CSRS pension. Periods of active duty while in the any of the military reserves, including your annual active duty training, count. However, National Guard active duty only counts if it was Title 10, section 233(d), or under a call by the president. Service must be honorable. And a deposit has to be received before you retire (that’s the buyback). 

You need to qualify for a FERS or CSRS pension, which generally means serving at least 5 years as a federal civilian. Then the military time you deposit, nicknamed buyback, is added to the years you actually work as a civilian when calculating your FERS or CSRS pension benefit.

The pension formula for a FERS employee is the average of your High 3 salaries times your creditable service times our multiplier. If you have 24 years of federal civilian service, a high-3 pay of $110,000, and will retire before age 62, your pension would be $110,000 x 24 years x 1%. That’s   $26,400 a year. If your buy back 6 years of military time, that 30 years which is $33,000. That’s $6,600 more a year in your FERS pension. Live 30 years in retirement and that’s almost $200,000 more with the buyback. And buying back military time may give you enough creditable years you to retire earlier. 

A buyback for a FERS employees is about 3% of your total military BASE pay for the years you are depositing. If you wait more than 3 years to buyback, you will also have to pay interest Even with the interest it is usually worthwhile to buy back the time.

The multiplier for CSRS employees is about 7%. But the rules for CSRS employees are more complicated. If you are a CSRS employee that will not be eligible for Social Security, no deposit, or buyback, is required and you will get full credit for military service after 1956. 

If you’re a CSRS employee that will be eligible for Social Security, the military time you buy back will count towards eligibility for retirement and computation of your pension. If you don’t buyback any time, your military time will count towards eligibility for retirement. And if you retire before your eligible for Social Security at 62, your military time will count toward your pension computation just up until you reach 62.

If you have a regular military pension and buy back those years you will have to give up your military pension. This very rarely makes financial sense. But if you’re entitled to a reserve pension that starts at age 60 you can keep that, whether you buyback or not. This often does come out as a great deal.

You don’t need to do all the math your HR office will do the calculations for you. You will need a copy of your DD 214 the Report of Transfer or Discharge. If you can’t find it, you can request a copy it from the National Personnel Records Center by filling out a Standard Form 180.  

Then complete a form RI 20-97 Estimated Earnings During Military Service and mail with a copy of your DD214 to your appropriate military finance center. They send back your statement of estimated earnings.

Take your estimate of earnings and your DD214 to HR and fill out an SF 2803 Application to Make Deposit or Redeposit. HR will then compute the amount of your military deposit using the Military Deposit Worksheet, let you know the amount, and options for making payments.

Once HR gives you the buyback cost, compare that to how much more your pension payments would be with the buyback. The process can be a pain, but it is usually well worth it. You can payoff all at once or in payments over time. And remember, your application to deposit, buyback, military time has to be approved and paid BEFORE you retire.

 The Federal Benefits Open Season starts November 8 this year and goes through December 13. This is the opportunity for our federal employees out there to re-look your benefit choices and explore your options for 2022. During the annual open season, you can enroll in a Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program and the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP) plan. You can also change plans, change plan options, you can change enrollment type between self, self plus one, or family coverage, or cancel your enrollment. Do nothing and your current coverage will automatically continue.
 
 You also have choices to make with the Federal Flexible Spending Account Program (FSAFEDS). https://www.fsafeds.com With an HCFSA, you use pre-tax dollars to pay for qualified out-of-pocket health care expenses. The maximum amount you can allot to an HCFSA is $2,750 (per individual) a year and the minimum is $100. You declare your savings amount and set up the allotment during open season and the total amount you elect to save will be available on day one of 2022. Your fund contributions are withdrawn automatically from each paycheck and deposited into your FSA before taxes are deducted. You can only carry over $550 of a the Health Care FSA from one year to the next.

With the Dependent Care FSA (DCFSA). You can contribute up to $5,000 a year  to pay for care for your child under age 13.  It also covers care for your spouse or a relative who is incapable of self-care and lives in your home. Dependent Care FSA savings cannot be carried over to the next year at all.  If you do nothing during open season your FSA election will NOT automatically continue. You must reenroll. 

 A High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP)  combines a Health Savings Account (HSA) or a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA), medical coverage and a tax-advantaged way to save for future medical expense.  With an HDHP, you must meet the entire annual deductible before plan benefits are paid for services other than in-network preventive care. Once you hit the  catastrophic limit, the plan pays 100% of the allowable amount. Th insurer will set up an HSA for you and put a set amount of money in it. You can also put contribute to the account with pre tax dollars. Funds deposited in your HSA are not taxed, interest on the HSA grows tax free, and you can withdraw it tax free to pay qualified medical expenses. There are more rules, so be sure to read more on this before making a decision. I’ll put a link to a good OPM fact sheet on HSAs in the show notes.  https://www.opm.gov/healthcare-insurance/fastfacts/high-deductible-health-plans.pdf

Don’t assume your plan is staying the same. Review your plan documents every Open Season for changes to  and what new options may be available. Is there are newer plan choices that is a better buy. Read the plan brochures. Some FEHB plans offer basic dental and vision benefits or discount programs. You might be better off in a FEHB plan with some dental benefits than paying a separate FEDVIP premium.

If you require extensive medical treatment in the 2022 it may be worth paying higher premiums for a plan that covers more of your claims. If everyone is healthy, consider paying less for a plan with less coverage and putting the extra cash in savings, like an FSA or HSA. 

OPM has a great online tool you can use to compare the various plans available and their costs for 2022. You can search for the plan options using your location or employee type, and you can review any changes to the plan you already have. https://www.opm.gov/healthcare-insurance/healthcare/plan-information/compare-plans/

The Department of Education recently announced some significant temporary changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program called the Limited Waiver Program. 

Who? Full time service members and federal employees are all eligible, as well as those of you working full time for state governments and most non-profits.

What is PSLF? It's a Loan Forgiveness program. If you work for a qualifying employer, have qualifying loans, work full-time, and make 120 on-time monthly loan payments, you can apply and have the remaining balance of your student loans forgiven. 

Why? Why has there been a change to the program? As it turned out in practice, PSLF was mostly an unfulfilled promise. Many borrows misunderstood the requirements, were misled by loan servicing providers, or never even qualified in the first place. The recently announced changes to PSLF are supposed to help correct some of these problems and fulfill the PSLF promise.

What has changed? A key requirement for PSLF is that you must have federal Direct Loans to qualify. The Federal Family Education Loans, Federal Perkins Loans, and Graduate Plus Loans are not a federal Direct Loans and don’t qualify. Loan payments under those programs didn’t count toward forgiveness. To meet this requirement and qualify most borrowers consolidated those loans into a federal Direct Loan. If you didn't before, there’s  good news. Now, any payments you made in the past in these federal student loan programs count toward your 120 payments, BUT only if you consolidate to a federal direct loan by Halloween 2022. 

Don’t know what kind of federal loans you have?  Log into your account on StudentAid.gov https://studentaid.gov/fsa-id/sign-in/landing , and go to the My Aid page StudentAid.gov/aid-summary/, then scroll down to the Loan Breakdown section. If you haven’t already, consolidate (DON’T refinance), consolidate into a federal Direct Loan . You’ve got one year. Details here https://studentaid.gov/app/launchConsolidation.action Once consolidated into a Direct Loan, your previous monthly payments made before October 31 this year, 2021, in those other federal loan programs will count toward PSLF retroactively. 

Change #2. Past payments under any repayment plan now count toward loan forgiveness. Up to now, you had to enroll in an Income Driven Repayment (IDR) plan like ICR, IBR, PAYE, and REPAYE or the standard 10-year repayment plan. These payments are supposed to be automatically recounted, but  keep an eye on it.

Temporary Change #3.  Some borrowers missed out because their payments were off by one or two pennies or late by just a few days. As a fix, the Department will automatically adjust PSLF payment counts for payments made on or before October 31, 2021 for borrowers who have already certified some employment for PSLF. This look back is a temporary benefit. So if you have not yet applied for PSLF forgiveness or certified employment do it by October 31, 2022 to get all those payments counted.

Lastly for service members, months spent on active duty will now count toward PSLF, even if your loans are in deferment or forbearance. Federal Student Aid is supposed to develop and implement a process to address this. .

For more information see https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-public-service-loan-forgiveness-pslf-program-overhaul

For tons of helpful information and PSLF application go to the official website at https://studentaid.gov/pslf/