Leaving SAVE on a Modest Paycheck? Missing the Plan Pick Turns a $100 Bill Into $405.

If you were on SAVE and your take-home pay is modest, the plan you pick in the next few weeks is worth about $300 a month. If you earn more, it may be worth nothing at all.

That’s the split in new numbers from the JPMorganChase Institute, which matched bank and credit bureau data for 740,000 households. Only 37% of SAVE borrowers can still lower their payment by moving to IBR or RAP. Those are mostly the lower earners. For them, doing nothing is expensive.

The plan that lasted 10 months

At every income, SAVE charged less than the income-driven plans before it. Borrowers made payments on it for 10 months before a court froze it in July 2024. A final court order killed it in early 2026. Now about 7 million people have to land somewhere else.

Your servicer’s notice starts a 90-day clock. Miss it, and Federal Student Aid says you get one final 30-day notice. Miss that, and you’re placed in the Standard plan, or the Tiered Standard plan if you took out a loan on or after July 1, 2026 that’s now in repayment. If you’re on auto pay, the bigger number gets pulled automatically.

The researchers measured what that costs. Among households that would still save on an income-driven plan, the median take-home income is about $36,100. Their median payment on IBR or RAP: $100 a month, about 3% of take-home pay. Their median on the Standard plan: $405, or 12.7%. A quarter of them would need more than 20%.

That’s $305 a month. Call it $3,660 a year, for not picking a plan.

Will people skip it? History says yes. When the pandemic pause ended, only 60% of borrowers made a payment in the first month, the study notes. Before the pandemic, borrowers who qualified for income-driven plans but never enrolled paid 10.2% of their income.

Which side are you on?

The two groups barely overlap. Among borrowers who stay eligible, 75% take home $56,000 or less. Among those losing eligibility, 75% take home at least $65,000.

If you’re in the first group, the default plan is the dumb option. Pick one.

If you’re in the second, your Standard payment probably already beats anything income-based. The study’s median for that group is $207 a month, about 2.7% of take-home pay. You don’t need to panic-switch into a plan that charges you more.

Do this now

Log in to the Repayment Calculator on StudentAid.gov and compare your Standard payment with IBR and RAP. They come out close for most people, per the study, but not identical. IBR offers a $0 payment below 150% of the poverty line and RAP doesn’t. RAP stretches forgiveness to 30 years.

Then check your inbox for the servicer notice and the “final notice.” Our SAVE deadline post explains how to find your real date. To see what a lower payment does to your payoff timeline, plug both numbers into our loan calculator. More on picking a plan lives on our education hub.

The detail

The study infers SAVE enrollment from forbearance and interest patterns, measures income from bank deposits rather than tax returns, and treats couples who share an account as one household. Most figures are as of December 2025. “Eligible” means IBR or RAP would beat a 10-year Standard payment, not that you’re barred from enrolling. Anyone can.

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