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VA Partial Claim Estimator
Estimate how much the VA can advance to cure your delinquent VA-backed mortgage arrears under the new Partial Claim Program (0% interest, repaid at sale).
Try it nowGuide & How-To
SAVE is gone, and doing nothing about it is the most expensive response: former SAVE borrowers who let the 90-day window (open since 1 July 2026) lapse are auto-enrolled into the Standard 10-Year plan, nearly double the payment for many. Enter your AGI and family size; the calculator prices RAP's 1%-10% AGI scale against Legacy IBR and the Standard default, so the plan you pick is a decision, not an accident.
The 90-day SAVE plan transition window (July 1, 2026)
Following court decisions ending the SAVE plan, the Department of Education notified all impacted borrowers with a 90-day window starting July 1, 2026, to select a legal replacement repayment plan. Failure to act within the 90 days results in automatic reassignment to the Standard 10-Year or Tiered Standard Repayment plan, which imposes maximum monthly payment shock.
Understanding the RAP payment formula (straight AGI scale)
Unlike legacy IDR plans, the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) abandons discretionary income and poverty line math. RAP calculates payments as a flat percentage of your total Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)—ranging from 1% to 10% depending on your AGI bracket (e.g. 5% of AGI for earnings between $50k and $60k)—with a $50/month credit per dependent and a $10/month mandatory minimum.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) eligibility
For public service workers, government employees, and 501(c)(3) non-profit staff, remaining enrolled in a qualifying IDR plan is essential to keep logging qualifying payments toward 100% tax-free loan cancellation at 120 payments (10 years). RAP and IBR qualify for PSLF credit.
Parent PLUS loan restrictions and ICR rules
Parent PLUS loans remain ineligible for RAP directly. Parent PLUS borrowers seeking income-driven payments must rely on Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR: 20% discretionary income cap above 100% of the $15,960 poverty line) or execute a double-consolidation before phase-out deadlines.
What the numbers actually mean for you
The 90-day window is the whole ballgame
SAVE's termination in March 2026 came with a deadline, not a suggestion: from 1 July 2026, former SAVE borrowers have 90 days to pick a plan. Choose RAP or a legacy IDR plan and your payment stays income-based and your forgiveness clock keeps ticking. Let the window lapse and the system chooses for you, Standard 10-Year, sized to amortize the full balance regardless of what you earn. The choice is filed on StudentAid.gov, not with a phone call, and the confirmation email is the receipt worth keeping.
For Priya that default is a 95% payment increase overnight. For anyone chasing PSLF it is worse: months on a non-qualifying plan simply do not count, and PSLF credit only continues if you land in RAP or an approved IDR plan inside the window. Every SAVE payment already banked keeps its PSLF credit, the risk is entirely about the months ahead.
RAP vs the old math: who wins, who loses
RAP's flat-percentage design has no poverty-line shield, so very low earners can pay more than they did under SAVE, where payments were often $0; RAP's floor is $10, and its bracket applies from the first dollar of AGI. Meanwhile middle earners with dependents often do better: the $50-per-dependent credit is a straight subtraction that old IBR never offered.
The forgiveness horizon also moved: RAP cancels remaining balances after 30 years of payments, against 20-25 under legacy IDR plans. If you are 15 years into an old plan's clock, switching resets nothing for PSLF but matters enormously for long-run cancellation, which is exactly the trade to check before leaving IBR for a slightly lower RAP payment.
RAP does carry one sweetener the old plans never had: when your payment does not cover the month's interest, the government waives the shortfall, so balances cannot snowball the way they did under pre-SAVE IDR plans. For borrowers whose real fear is watching the number grow while they pay, that guarantee is worth weighing alongside the raw monthly amount.
Parent PLUS borrowers: this exit is not yours
Parent PLUS loans are locked out of RAP just as they were locked out of SAVE. Their menu remains ICR, at a stiff 20% of discretionary income, or Standard repayment, and the old double-consolidation workaround was closed to new attempts.
If you hold Parent PLUS debt, the calculator's RAP number is a mirage; run the ICR figure with your servicer instead, and if the household also carries the student's own Direct Loans, treat the two stacks as separate strategies rather than one blended decision.
Ninety days, four moves, in this order
First, pull your AGI from last year's return and run it through the calculator above, that is ten minutes and it anchors everything else, including whether RAP or legacy IBR is your cheaper door. Second, if you are chasing PSLF, confirm your employer certification is current before you switch plans, because a plan change with stale certification is how qualifying months quietly go missing.
Third, submit the plan selection through your servicer and screenshot the confirmation; transition-period servicing errors are common enough that your own paper trail is the only reliable record. Fourth, recheck the first bill against the calculator's number. A payment that arrives hundreds of dollars above the formula is a processing error to dispute on day one, not a new fact of life to absorb. And keep the AGI documentation handy, recertification comes around annually, and a missed recertification quietly reprices you.
How the RAP payment math works
The Repayment Assistance Plan that replaced SAVE from 1 July 2026 drops the old discretionary-income gymnastics entirely: your payment is a flat 1% to 10% of AGI depending on your income bracket, minus $50 a month per dependent, with a $10 monthly floor.
The calculator computes your RAP payment, sets it against legacy IBR (10% of income above 150% of the poverty line) and the Standard 10-Year amount, because those are the three doors in front of every former SAVE borrower right now.
Calculation Steps:
- Enter AGI and family size; dependents are family size minus one.
- The RAP bracket is read off AGI in $10,000 steps: 1% up to $20,000, rising a point per band to 10% above $100,000. Note the floor: even the lowest band pays at least $10 a month.
- Monthly payment = AGI x bracket rate / 12, minus $50 per dependent, never below $10.
- For comparison, legacy IBR is computed as 10% of (AGI minus 150% of the 2026 poverty guideline, $15,960 for a single person) divided by 12.
Worked example
Priya, single, AGI $52,000, no dependents, was on SAVE until the courts killed it.
RAP puts her in the 5% band: $52,000 x 5% / 12 = $216.67 a month.
Legacy IBR runs ($52,000 - $23,940) x 10% / 12 = $233.83, slightly worse for her.
Doing nothing is the trap: miss the 90-day selection window that opened 1 July 2026 and she is auto-enrolled into Standard 10-Year at $421.88 a month, nearly double, and none of it counts toward income-driven forgiveness timelines.
Input definitions
Review the glossary of terms used in the calculation model below. Click on highlighted links to read more in-depth definitions in our financial glossary:
| Parameter | Definition & Context |
|---|---|
| Adjusted Gross Income | Federal AGI from your latest return. RAP brackets and IBR discretionary income both key off it. |
| Family Size | Household size. Each dependent beyond yourself takes $50 off the monthly RAP payment. |
| Loan Type | Parent PLUS loans are barred from RAP and SAVE alike; they remain limited to ICR or Standard repayment. |
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