The Education Department has changed the formula for the purchase of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which allows borrowers who missed payments during deferment or forbearance to retroactively purchase these months by paying a lump sum. Each month will count towards the 120 qualifying payments required for full loan forgiveness. The PSLF Buyback program uses the SAVE plan, which calculated monthly payments based on 5% of your discretionary income for undergraduate loans and 10% for graduate loans. The Department of Education will no longer use this formula for buyback calculations, even for borrowers involuntarily placed into SAVE forbearance when courts blocked the plan in 2024. Over 88,000 borrowers are trapped in a growing application backlog, with more than 80% of them having pending buyback requests. The higher buyback costs could potentially prevent loan forgiveness from being reached entirely.