If you have been affected by a natural disaster in the area where you live or work, you can ask your loan servicer to pause loan payments for up to 90 days through a natural disaster forbearance. Interest will still accrue (adds up) during the forbearance period, and you will still be responsible for paying that interest in the future.
Once the initial forbearance period related to the disaster is over, you may ask for more forbearance time. Your servicer can grant additional forbearance time, in 30-day increments. But your total period of forbearance can’t exceed a maximum of 12 monthly billing cycles from the date of the disaster.
If you’re behind on your loan payments, your servicer can apply the forbearance for 30 days into the future and cover any past delinquency. But at the end of the forbearance, you will still be responsible for paying the interest from your delinquency as well as forbearance.
If you are in default on your loans, the Department of Education will suspend collections of a defaulted loan for 90 days, including wage garnishment. If you’re making payments toward rehabilitation of a defaulted loan, you will be allowed to stop making payments for those 90 days. At the end of the 90 days, you will either be able to
pick up where you left off (e.g., if you had made six payments toward rehabilitation before the disaster, you could make three more to complete the rehabilitation process) or
make up your missed payments in one lump sum in order to rehabilitate by your original planned date.
For borrowers pursuing PSLF, a disaster forbearance will not count as a qualifying payment period.
If you are experiencing an economic hardship, you are able to request an Economic Hardship Deferment, which will count towards PSLF.
If you have seen a decrease in your income due to a natural disaster, you also have the option to have your Income Driven Repayment plan recalculated to reflect your current income and lower your monthly payment.
If you are a Savi Premium user, you can reach out to our support team from the Contact Us button on your Savi dashboard for more advice in this situation.