Thousands of borrowers working toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness opened their accounts this summer and found months missing from their qualifying payment count. Some lost six. Some lost more. The Education Department says it corrected counter code errors introduced in 2024 during a system overhaul that took effect in July. Whatever the cause, the practical situation is the same: a number people have been planning ten years around moved, and it moved without notice.

What Got Removed

Two categories appear to account for most of the reductions.

The first is forbearance. Months spent in general or hardship forbearance were being credited when they should not have been. Processing forbearance, the administrative kind that happens while paperwork moves, still counts.

The second is repayment plan eligibility. Payments made under Extended or Graduated plans from late 2024 forward were credited in error. Those plans have never qualified for forgiveness. Only income driven plans and the standard ten year plan do.

If neither of those describes your history, your count should not have moved. If it did, that is a case to make rather than a fact to accept.

Why The Number Is Not Self Correcting

Forgiveness is not a calculation the system runs on your behalf at the end. It is a running tally, and the tally has now been wrong in both directions within two years. A borrower who assumes the servicer is keeping accurate books is trusting a system that has publicly failed to.

The burden of proof sits with the borrower, and it sits there permanently.

Employment Certification Is The Other Half

Even a correct payment count is worthless without certified employment covering the same months. Certification is what links a payment to qualifying work, and gaps in certification are the second most common reason a forgiveness application stalls.

Final Take

Do this in one sitting, this week.

Log into StudentAid.gov and download the My Aid data file, which shows qualifying counts at the individual loan level rather than the summary number on the dashboard. Loans within the same account can carry different counts, and the dashboard figure hides that. Save the file with today's date in the filename, because the value of a record is that it predates the next change.

Compare it against your own payment history and your employment certification forms. If months disappeared that do not fall into the forbearance or non qualifying plan categories, file a PSLF Reconsideration Request. It is a form, it is free, and it is the only mechanism that exists.

Then keep the documentation somewhere that is not the servicer's website. Servicers change, portals get rebuilt, and the borrowers who come out of this cleanly will be the ones holding their own copies.

Written by Deniss Slinkins
Millionaire Core