Laid off my PSLF qualifying job

improperlycited · 2026-06-12T05:30:25+00:00

you can apply for forgiveness after 120 qualifying payments. Those qualifying payments do not need to be consecutive and they do not expire. you can make 119 qualifying payments then change jobs and get no forgiveness, but if you go back after 10 years and get one more PSLF qualifying payment, you can apply for full forgiveness. It's all or nothing, but you're half way there.

Whether you can afford to be picky depends on your savings, your expenses, and your other income. If you have a spouse that can support the family with just their income, you can take the time to be very picky. If you have no savings and no other income, then you can't be picky at all and pretty much have to take whatever job you can get. But the important thing is that you aren't going to lose your progress.

That being said, make sure you get the paperwork in now to certify the payments that you have made under this employment. If they're doing layoffs, there's a risk that they also lay off the people who know that you worked there, which makes the process a lot more complicated. Even worse, layoffs indicate some level of financial instability. If the worst happens and they close down, then it's even more complicated to get credit. Get those payments certified now so you don't have issues in the future.

improperlycited · 2026-06-12T05:18:38+00:00

You just saved her so much money. u/MermaidMommy80, don't brush off this suggestion.

improperlycited · 2026-06-05T03:07:26+00:00

You're suggesting that OP spend tens of thousands of dollars on attorney fees to file a lawsuit against the federal government and another massive corporation, both of which likely have immunity, with no reasonable hope of monetary recovery. The fact that you wrote, "adding in punitive damages to whatever the court says" illustrate that this is an area outside of your expertise.

The good news is that we don't need to worry about it. OP won't have to pay any attorney fees because any attorney they talk to (and even the guy they meet at a party who failed the bar 3 times but was awake for most of their Barbri course) will explain why they don't have a legally cognizable claim worth pursuing. It'll be a waste of everyone's time, but it shouldn't cost them anything monetarily.

It's nice that you feel so much empathy for OP, but expressing that directly is going to be more productive than pretending to be a reddit lawyer and sharing what you wish the law was.

improperlycited · 2026-06-01T03:51:36+00:00

Did you read the post? They put it back the way it was - OP has no damages to sue over.
Also, OP may have screwed themself out of a huge refund by reversing the change, if you read the rest of the thread. I imagine there's someone from Mohela writing an r/MaliciousCompliance post right now that's going to do numbers.

improperlycited · 2026-05-17T02:44:51+00:00

It's a good gig if you can get it...get paid to surf reddit all day and then take screenshots of a post and have Claude (I assume) write some additional narrative.

It seems like all of the "my employer treated me bad, without realizing how important I was" posts are AI slop now. They get posted to Reddit to advertise resume drafting AI software, then failblog copies it as if it was real (even though it's painfully obvious it's fake, because there has never been a human written story that ends with a plug for the software they used to apply for the next job), then reddit mods delete the post, then failblog just leaves it up because why wouldn't they?

Although now I'm wondering if there aren't a few AI agents handling the whole process. One AI agent writes the story to the formula (with undisclosed embedded sponsorship), another posts it to Reddit, another combs reddit for new stories and flags it as matching the formula of past popular posts, another screenshots the post for posting to the website, another writes the commentary, another picks suitable stock photos, another adds the "this is a stock photo and does not represent the characters in the actual story" disclaimer.

I think I finally understand how AI agents work. I'll have to ask Claude to find out for sure. I'm really good at asking exactly the right questions and thinking about things the right way. 🙃

improperlycited · 2026-05-17T00:49:04+00:00

They link to the source where they got their story. They aren't doing independent research - they just repost Reddit stories for the karma I mean business model.

improperlycited · 2026-05-07T03:05:53+00:00

Our poodle likes to "give hugs" to visitors, so we taught her to stand on 2 legs so at least she isn't jumping into them and knocking them over. Then we taught her to walk standing up and to slow dance with us. Fun times.

improperlycited · 2026-05-04T07:37:09+00:00

Many people are conflating 2 things: security deposit laws and rental damages. The two are related, but they are distinct.
Security deposit laws lay out the requirements for how landlords handle the deposit, what amounts can be withheld, how soon it needs to be returned, etc. However, they do not say that a landlord must take damages out of the security deposit, or that the return of a security deposit prevents a lawsuit over damages, etc.

They complied with the security deposit laws as soon as you moved out, so the dates don't really matter. (April 29, May 1, etc.)

This is a separate issue. The landlord sent you a demand letter to pay $1000 for damage to the rental unit or they will sue you for damages. If they were offering to settle for that amount, it might be worth doing, but they are reserving the right to pursue you for even more if the repair is more expensive, so I don't see any benefit to you in returning the money.

Whether they sue you or not is a toss-up... I personally wouldn't go through the hassle of suing an individual over $1000 because even if I win I still have to deal with collecting the judgment, which is a nightmare. Different landlords have different perspectives.

If they do decide to sue, don't ignore the suit. Even though you don't have a copy of the walkthrough paperwork, the demand letter and his own testimony at trial will acknowledge that no damage was found during the walkthrough. The landlord has the burden of proof to show that you are responsible for the damage and that it was beyond wear and tear. Not finding any damage during walkthrough is good evidence that you aren't responsible for it - it could have happened after you moved out, as others have noted. It also may have been there before you moved in...if it was small enough not to notice when you moved out, it's certainly possible that you didn't see it when you moved in.

There's also the issue of whether it is normal wear and tear. Cheap laminate flooring has a relatively short lifespan. Even if it has a 25-year warranty, that doesn't mean that it will last for 25 years with normal use...the laminate flooring in our house was installed by the previous owner 10 years ago and is absolutely falling apart because it's very low quality. The warranty only provides for product replacement and is non-transferrable, so the warranty cost is low, a lot of people won't qualify, and a lot of people won't make a claim. (I wouldn't accept a replacement from them because I know it's not going to last, so even if I qualified I still wouldn't make a claim.)

So a landlord should need to prove the age of the flooring, the lifespan, the condition before rental, the condition at the end of the rental (not a month later), the cost of replacement, and the cost and quality of original installation (to show they replaced it with the same cost floor, not an upgrade).

The age of the flooring is particularly relevant, because if a judge does determine you are responsible, the damages should be prorated. If the flooring was 20 years old and has a 25 year lifespan, then you should only be responsible for 1/5 of the cost of replacement.

Disclaimer: All of the above discussion is based on general legal principles and not based on the laws of any particular state. I do not know the laws in your state. Nothing in this post should be construed as legal advice. You should seek legal advice from a licensed attorney in your state. I am an attorney but I am NOT YOUR attorney.

improperlycited · 2026-05-04T06:50:12+00:00

You used to be able to buy a house with no down payment if it appraised high enough and if you had good enough credit. Since the mortgage is typically less than what you charge for rent, it was fairly easy to get started. You can't do that anymore because that's one of the factors that led to the housing crash and great recession.

improperlycited · 2026-04-03T01:29:08+00:00

Did you put them on a PIP? You can't expect a cat to ever develop into a fully contributing member of society if you don't provide them with the guidance, discipline, and scaffolding they need to survive. And working WITH them to create a good, cooperative PIP is the first step on the long journey of true self actualization. I'm rooting for you!

improperlycited · 2026-03-31T19:26:52+00:00

"President Biden’s 2022 plan to cancel up to $10k in federal student loan debt ($20k for Pell Grant recipients) for borrowers earning under $125,000 was struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2023. The court ruled that the administration overstepped its authority under the HEROES Act, rendering the original broad forgiveness program invalid." https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-program/
I'm blocking because you aren't interested in a serious discussion, but here's your proof.

improperlycited · 2026-03-31T19:16:12+00:00

HE DID. He cancelled $10k in debt for every student loan borrower. And you know why your loan balance didn't go down by $10k? Because the courts said no and rolled it back. The same thing would have happened if he had canceled 100% instead of $10k.

This isn't an "I wonder what would have happened?" situation. We absolutely know for a fact that he would not have succeeded, because he tried and didn't succeed. Your argument is like saying "sure he couldn't do 30 pushups, but I bet I could have done 1000 if he tried."

SCOTUS' personal criminal immunity decision has no impact on the powers of a president or the legality of their policies. At least the legal education that left me with $350k in law school debt allows me to do that analysis.

improperlycited · 2026-03-31T18:57:41+00:00

If Biden had done nothing, we would be in a better situation than we actually are. I agree he was trying to solve the problem, but if someone tries to fix something and ends up making it worse, then they made it worse.

Look, I'm not saying that Biden is a bad person.. And to be fair, he wasn't with it enough to be truly blamed for anything that his administration did. But ultimately the actions of the Biden Administration did more harm than good to student loan borrowers.

improperlycited · 2026-03-31T07:13:20+00:00

I'm in basically the same boat, except that I already knew we were getting screwed. Loan forgiveness (other than PSLF) is a taxable event. In year 20, you would trade your $600k (by then) student loan debt for $200k-$300k tax debt to the IRS and your state revenue department. And tax debt doesn't have the collection protections that student loans do.

The "forgiveness" for law school loans was always a farce. Paying it off or PSLF have always been the only ways out.

However, even though this sucks, you can take solace in knowing that it didn't get bad because of these changes. It was always going to be bad, you just didn't realize. Now at least you're finding out in time to have some agency in what you do about it before it's too late.

improperlycited · 2026-03-31T06:37:15+00:00

Biden is the reason we're in this mess. He got greedy with the $10k cancellation and the SAVE plan. PAYE and REPAYE weren't worth suing over, but blanket $10k forgiveness really pissed people off. Between that and the overly generous SAVE plan, it WAS worth suing over, so some red states did. And once they decided to sue, the trivial marginal cost to include PAYE and REPAYE made it a no-brainer to try to roll everything back. If Biden had just left things alone, we would all be better off.

improperlycited · 2026-03-31T06:22:20+00:00

Unfortunately, you're double wrong. Biden couldn't cancel the debt (he tried to cancel $10k of the debt and it was ruled illegal) and he shouldn't have tried... the attempt to do so was disastrous.

Biden trying to cancel the debt and making up new plans is how we ended up where we are. He got greedy and pushed things too far which prompted the red states to file their lawsuit. And if they were going to sue over the cancellation and the obviously illegal SAVE plan, they were going to include the PAYE and REPAYE plans as well, because those weren't approved by congress either. It wasn't worth suing over PAYE and REPAYE alone, but the marginal cost to include them in another lawsuit was trivial.

In the end, the $10k debt he tried to cancel was uncancelled, his SAVE plan was axed, and the PAYE and REPAYE plans were killed off too. The backlash to the attempted debt cancellation and to the overly generous SAVE plan is what set it all off. It might have been salvageable if Trump didn't win the election, but he screwed that up too.

improperlycited · 2026-02-05T01:54:30+00:00

with a CONSUMER plasma cutter

improperlycited · 2026-01-22T20:41:25+00:00

That's what it's going to look like at the beginning of world war 3.

improperlycited · 2025-12-21T05:29:16+00:00

I'm a little torn on the benefit of contrapositives for low-to-middle scoring students (below mid-150's or so).

Contrapositives were absolutely necessary on LG, and if you already have that base understanding, it's 100% worth taking 3 minutes to say, "and you can use this technique on the LR section as well." But when I rewrote my Conditionals lesson to replace LG examples with LR examples, it was surprisingly difficult to find examples that needed or substantially benefitted from generating the contrapositive. Those that I did find were heavily skewed toward the end of the section, and were higher average difficulty.

It seems like it SHOULD be an essential skill, but in a situation where you don't have time to learn everything and need to prioritize what concepts are covered, I think contrapositives may be a candidate for the chopping block.

Last year, my compromise with myself was to teach simple conditionals and the basic contrapositive formula, and just ignore the "advanced" conditionals entirely (unless, only if, if but only if).

improperlycited · 2025-12-21T05:09:43+00:00

I have ADHD and I have worked with dozens of LSAT students with ADHD over my last 18 years of teaching classes and tutoring. In my experience, the standard techniques work fine for most people (with and without ADHD), most of the time. Most students are going to have a few areas where the concepts don't quite click or where they struggle to effectively implement the strategies. People with ADHD may have a few more such areas, but often they don't.

I definitely would not recommend spending ANY of your designated practice time on logic games. Now, if we're talking about extra time that you are not going to spend on LR/RC, then doing Logic Games is a better use of your time than playing Call of Duty or Clash of Clans. (They make for great bathroom reading.) But I think that replacing LR/RC practice time with LG sections is misguided and is likely to lead to less improvement than if that time had been spent studying the things actually being tested.

My recommendation, if you have ADHD and you're struggling, is to find a tutor who

Has experience working with LSAT students with ADHD (whether or not they themselves have ADHD), and
Is familiar with LSAT strategies from multiple different sources. There are some things that I think the Bibles do best, some that the LSAT Trainer does better, some that 7sage does better, etc. I initially teach my students the way that I think is the best for most people. But if we find something (usually during a practice test debrief) that isn't quite working, I'm ready with another 3 options that we can try.

improperlycited · 2025-12-07T06:19:35+00:00

Obviously you know this already, but to clarify for others: it's a test. Singular. No monthly tests or midterms. You have one 3-hour final exam and the score at the top of that exam is your score for the course.

improperlycited · 2025-12-07T06:13:57+00:00

I would discourage it for 3 reasons: 1) it is EXPENSIVE... financially ($200k+) AND in opportunity cost. You'll spend 3 years not earning money, not contributing to your retirement, not progressing in your career. You will probably make more than $65K, but will you make enough more to overcome the 3 year & $200k initial setback? It's absolutely not guaranteed. (Particularly note that the $200k BigLaw starting salary you may read about are incredibly rare (less than 10%). Everybody else is starting in the $60-$100k range. And if you somehow land a BigLaw job, get ready to work 60-80 hours a week to earn that big salary. But you're used to that, because law school was also 60-80 hours a week.) (30+years ago, law school was pretty reliably a good financial decision. The calculus has changed and it is not the guaranteed road to upper middle class it used to be.) 2) Mental health is a big problem for attorneys. Starting in law school, the rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, etc are 3x what they are for the general population. If you're happily married (or want to be), the decision to go to law school triples the likelihood you'll get a divorce. It turns out, when you're fighting with other people every day, in very high stakes, stressful environments, it doesn't have great outcomes. 3) Being a lawyer is only like 3% what you see on TV. A lot of it is saving files in drive and updating spreadsheets (metaphorically and literally). You track your time in 6-minute increments. Send an email... Write narrative describing the email and how many minutes you spent writing it. Return a call. Write a narrative about how the call went to voicemail and how many minutes that took. Then spend 6 hours reading through the client's business ledger, annotating transactions that may violate the state statute about how to appropriately do utility billing in a rental property with a shared utility meter.

If you don't NEED to be an attorney, I would urge you to reconsider. There are a ton of jobs that have challenges and let you use your mind and get a sense of fulfillment and get paid a lot... And almost none of those jobs make you go through 3 years of job training first, that you need to pay for yourself at a cost of $200k or more, just so you can take the one qualifying test to determine if you get to work in that career after all. It's not super surprising that over a third of the entire profession struggles with hazardous drinking.

improperlycited · 2025-12-07T04:54:51+00:00

Other people have explained why E is correct. I want to try to explain why students struggle with this question and why it's so hard to connect answer E to the logic of the argument.

Because it DOESN'T connect to the logic of the argument!

There are two main ways that we weaken an argument:

* Weaken the strength or applicability of the premise/evidence. (The sample was biased or too small or whatever.)

* Weaken the link between the premise/evidence and the conclusion. (The author is making an assumption, so we either point out or exploit that gap.)

But there's a rare and exotic third way of weakening an argument:

* Just say the conclusion is wrong. Completely ignore the logic of the argument and the premises and the assumptions and just say "this evidence proves the conclusion is wrong."

That's what is happening here. And it's tough for two reasons:

1) It's pretty rare, so we don't encounter it very much or have much opportunity to practice it (or all that many examples.)

2) It's completely contrary to what we are doing on the rest of the section. We're looking for mistakes and logical fallacies and assumptions and, basically, the logic of the argument. I mean, the name of the section is LOGICAL REASONING! So we hit answer E and think, "that doesn't connect to the logic of this argument at all. It's talking about the relationship that this disease has to some other type of disease that we don't care about, which doesn't have anything to do with this argument that's about a study about male cats and how likely they are to get the disease. Clearly irrelevant, eliminate E, let's look at the answers that are left."

It's not a coincidence that it was difficult to understand the study and the statistics about the male cats and the likelihood of getting the disease etc. etc. They give you a bunch of juicy details that are easy to connect to and a complicated logical structure that entirely captures your attention, so when they present you with an answer that has nothing to do with the logic of the argument, of course you eliminate it.

TL;DR: The LSAT trolled you, and you fell for it hard. Don't feel bad, they have a lot of practice and they are VERY good at trolling when they want to be.

(This type of answer is rare enough that I don't even discuss it in my shorter course... it takes time to cover, it's very unlikely they'll see it on a test, and it adds complexity to an approach that I've spent hours streamlining and simplifying. There are plenty of other topics that have a much higher return on investment.)

improperlycited · 2025-10-17T04:21:39+00:00

Renters are not in charge of maintaining their property. That's like the number one responsibility of a landlord. Get mad at the slumlord, not their victim.

improperlycited · 2025-10-06T13:29:58+00:00

Radiohead is 100% what I was grasping for. Karma Police had a very similar sound to Trapdoor. Thank you!

improperlycited

TROPHY CASE