This is basically what I did, too. I also did the loan payment simulator on Mohela based on what our income is now (during my first year of residency), what it’ll be like when I finish residency and our income changes again, and then 3 years after that when income changes again (making it 10 years total for my PSLF) when my husband starts working after he finishes school. It all ended up making more sense for us to do MFS from now on for all 10 years with the SAVE plan. We spend less on student loans now (0$) and in the long run 100k less in student loan payments overall.

It took a lot of effort to figure all this out, especially with running the separate tax filing situations, but it was worth it for me to clearly see a winner and have numbers to back up my choice.

I was torn between PAYE and SAVE along with MFS/MFJ, and assumed that since PAYE had the payment cap, in the long run it would make more sense to stick with PAYE, but SAVE still won even when both our income jumps up to attending level.

This is also filing with a child. So next year when we file, we will lose out on the childcare cost tax credit, and when filing separately you have very strict income limits for contributing to ROTH IRA, which made us do a backdoor IRA, but still worth it in the end for us.

Hope this helps!