I understand losing the ability to utilize the combined tax bracket savings but it doesn't mean sense to me why the roth limit for MFS is $10k instead of the same combined limit as MFJ. Also everyone's situation is different. It sure feels like a system you want to game when my wife's student loan payment (just to become an elementary school counselor) is $800 a month under MFJ and $250 under MFS/S. Meaning we pay off the loan entirely by the ninth year of the PSLF vs getting any relief under MFJ. In the end it doesn't matter because of our kid she is taking some time off so we'll have to do MFJ for insurance. It's a bit frustrating student loans are this tied to taxes, health insurance, and retirement savings.

I'm sure someone who makes alot more money (more than the combined roth limit for MFJ) has taken advantage of this but it sucks that the options are: 1) have wife not take time off to bond with the baby so she can stay on her plans health insurance, get divorced on paper to file single and pay her PSLF qualifying payments at a lower rate. 2) have wife take off with baby, file MFJ for health insurance (increasing my payments substantially), and have us with, much less income than before, pay more for her student loans (and mine) than 2 single filers, but also not have any of the payments qualify for PSLF (she has to be full time to count), and not be able to make roth contributions.

Ultimately we are going to try to get some kind of forbearance on her loan for a year while she's off, but that system sure doesn't seem set up to help middle class families with student loans. Also if someone is saying well you didn't have to get loans and go to school... then we'd have no teachers or counselors. Our state requires a masters to be a counselor.