u/AvocadoOfDeath

I have federal grad school loans from 2010 - 2011 with an income based repayment plan, and the 7.2% average interest has raised the balance to $106K as of right now. At the current pace, I will pay off the loans in 12 or 17 years depending on if I stick with a normal IBR or go for the new RAP plan when it's available in July.

The estimated monthly payments for each are $560 for the 12 year plan, or $350 for the 17 year plan, leading to $83K in 12 years or $73K in 17 years, not taking into account rate increases along with my salary increases. Then there will be a tax bomb when the loan is forgiven. I earn $70K per year.

A relative recently passed away, and I inherited ~$110K. Does it make sense to pay off the loan now, or invest the inheritance and continue making loan payments until the forgiveness year? Or some combo of the two? I'm a generally risk adverse person.

My grad school loans are from 2010 - 2011, and they're $106K now because I've always paid the minimums and the 7.2% average interest was actually slowly creeping up the total over the 10 years that I repaid. The COVID forbearance hit, and then I tried switching to SAVE in 2023 when that was over. I was placed in another forbearance when that went to court. Going based off of https://studentaid.gov/app/api/nslds/payment-counter/summary I have 152 to 172 qualifying payments so far on each individual loan. Given my stats, I've been shooting for the 25 year forgiveness rather than full repayment.

A relative passed away recently and I inherited a little over $110K from them. I'm pretty sure that it makes the most sense to invest that money elsewhere and continue to pay off my student loans at the minimum level for whichever IBR I end up selecting now that the SAVE plan is dead, but I wanted to double check and see if I'm missing something. My current income is $70K/year. A calculator that I found online estimates that I would pay about $350/month for RAP and $560/month for a standard IBR, vs over $1,000 for a standard repayment.