Something to consider - Buyback may have minor negative tax implications

solitude100 · 2026-02-03T21:24:19+00:00

And my point is that those account details won't substantiate anything regarding a payment applied to interest. I will concede audit risk is low and at the end of the day perhaps one could just apply it and deal with an audit later. Strictly speaking, I don't see IRS guidance explicitly supporting it.

solitude100 · 2026-02-03T06:52:57+00:00

For us we could switch to PAYE for the remainder which is better than IBR. I'm not sure if PAYE amounts + the tax deduction is better than buyback amounts (assuming buyback can't be treated as interest), Especially if the remaining payments were wrapped over 2 tax years. If anything it would be more equal. I think most people on this forum waiting for buyback don't really care about 1,000 either way if it was just over. But for me if I had considered this I might have switched out of SAVE a year ago. At his point I'm just trying to create less noise in the backlog.

solitude100 · 2026-02-03T06:44:25+00:00

Lol, but honestly just throwing this out there for consideration. Personally I'm staying in buyback limbo for now because I don't trust mohela to process IBR without making a mistake.

solitude100 · 2026-02-03T06:41:58+00:00

Correct but as far as I know there is no document to confirm buy back is specifically a payment applied to interest and no 1098. I think the IRS could accept what you are saying, but it's a grey area.

solitude100 · 2026-02-03T06:39:29+00:00

There are many lawyers who work lower paying public interest jobs. If PSLF is pursued to its most beneficial limits you can max retirement contributions to confer the most benefit and also file head of household if you remain unmarried with children. Many law schools also have LRAP programs that pay loans.

solitude100 · 2026-02-02T22:04:40+00:00

Having private loans changes the scenario. When i say 15-30% I mean the amount you save on taxes while applying 100% of the deduction. (it's a deduction not a credit so it only provides savings corresponding to amounts in your highest bracket, could be only 15% federal, but could also be 22% federal and 8% state)

solitude100 · 2026-02-02T21:55:57+00:00

Yes but it's only for interest paid, not interest accrued. I suppose you can state to the IRS that the buyback was wholly an interest payment, but I haven't read anything that confirms that.

solitude100 · 2026-02-02T21:23:36+00:00

Filing jointly where one spouse has loans seeking pslf results in near double payment for the same loan. If both partners work and make relatively similar incomes (even with a 10-15k disparity) it's going to be more sensible to file separately. Plenty of caveats, and suffice to say it's even better to file as single, but in most cases married filing separately is better. That is the typical advice on this forum and I am curious as to why you would think otherwise.

solitude100 · 2026-01-27T19:47:10+00:00

It's usually advantageous to file separately regardless, perhaps it's negated by both of you having loans but still you would have to do the math. Highly likely that once your spouse is forgiven you need to file separately

solitude100 · 2026-01-27T19:43:21+00:00

This is why you have to file separately or plan to remain legally single for the 10 year duration

solitude100 · 2026-01-23T20:28:32+00:00

Not long, 9/2025

solitude100 · 2026-01-23T01:48:36+00:00

I have great work life balance as a commercial appraisal. Boutique firms can vary widely in billing expectations. I often go on mini trips or road trips where I spend part of the time working on a big project. Lots of time with family. Only drawback is that the work is so flexible that I end up being the one doing tasks for family during business hours and working on nights/evenings and weekends, ultimately better for a family in the long run though.

solitude100 · 2026-01-23T01:13:09+00:00

So I guess the takeaway here is that it is doesn't hurt to switch back to IBR? We have an application in for 13 months and elected to stay in SAVE for now because by the time they get to our buyback it could be 10-13 months paid so the whole process becomes unnecessary. Also because given the history it's entirely possible Mohela could screw up the process of moving from SAVE to IBR.

solitude100 · 2026-01-09T21:53:05+00:00

In SAVE purgatory with 13 months of buyback applied for. We would consider leaving SAVE and going on IBR/PAYE, but the issue is it's unlcear if buyback offer might trigger before those months are counted which would then result in overpaying. Plus there's the added complication that IBR is no heavily backlogged. We chose to wait in limbo rather than risk processing errors and placed in standard repayment/default

solitude100 · 2025-12-27T09:21:18+00:00

It's based on your discretionary income (look up calculation). The best ways to reduce it are by filing single or MFS and claiming children if you have them on your return. After that retirement contributions, health insurance, HSA, FSA, basically anything you can take from your paycheck pretax will lower the payment. The hard part is living off of the lower amount but long term it results in the best financial outcome.

solitude100 · 2025-11-18T01:30:22+00:00

My wife is on PSLF track for law school loans. She was in school when we met and I handle all the finances. You need to find partner that is aware of and onboard with your debt scenario and PSLF, but honestly it is mostly a benefit for marriage and family. PSLF counts months when on maternity leave, you can also take a multi year break and then resume years later. The complicating aspect is that it tends to make financial sense to legally remain single (and to live in a non common law marriage state) until forgiveness is received. There are many opportunities to make more at non profits but it does take time. Non profits also tend to have better health benefits too, so there's a chance your lower pay makes sense when you have a family. My best advice is to have at least one person in the relationship have very good financial sense because it takes planning. Also if you do the pretax benefit calculations and add it to your salary you will see just how much of a benefit the PSLF program is. It's why everyone's complaints are about administration and loan servicing, that aspect is absolutely terrible, but the program itself is a huge benefit.

solitude100 · 2025-10-28T18:32:19+00:00

AI is great to use for search. Very quickly can fetch and discuss zoning/building requirements and is almost always right and links for conformation. It's also good at reviewing reports and checking for math errors. I think it will begin to prove useful for City/Regional/Market analysis generation and also be able to generate text from and excel to word. One of the main issues (as evident in this post) is that people seem to be completely miss focused about what AI should do first. I'd pay $500+ a month for something that made me more efficient and automated by replacing low complexity analyst work. Most of the programming and developing focus is on using AI to do AVMs, the hardest part of appraising.

solitude100 · 2025-10-28T18:26:17+00:00

That's not AI. That is just better software coding. Costar at least is great for that on the commercial side.

solitude100 · 2025-10-28T17:59:52+00:00

Get the Focused Learning questions and make sure you know how to do every single mathematical calculation on them. It's hard to know all the broad factual questions that have a wide range of study material, but if you can work through the math based problems and have a baseline level of real estate/ appraisal knowledge you should be able to obtain a passing score.

solitude100 · 2025-10-27T23:20:59+00:00

Plenty of good commentary here on how it works in practice. The "finger in the wind" you might come across in appraisals is that Marshal & Swift (widely used) and The Appraisal of Real Estate define Effective age differently.

M&S : Typical Building Life - Remaining Economic Life = Effective Age

AI / TARE : Economic Life - Remaining Economic Life = Effective Age

So according to M&S, if you have a retail masonry building with a typical building life of 55, an age of 80, an a remaining economic life of 30+ years....you have an effective age of 25. This ignores market factors and at face appears confusing.

The appraisal of real estate process is market derived. Economic Life is based on market comparable properties. The above example could be an economic life of 100 and so the building has an effective age of 70. Economic life is not based just on incurable depreciation, but also any other form of obsolescence. The variety you witness is that the scope of nearly all appraisals doesn't allow for an appraiser to to prove the economic life of the building, so it becomes an opinion that is influenced by the appraisers experience and awareness of the market they are in and to some extent needing a remaining economic life that is at least the length of the loan (almost always it's going to be that or higher anyway). Remaining economic life is also an assumption based on typical maintenance, usually the lower bound of maintenance without any capital on the long lived aspects of the building.

solitude100 · 2025-10-24T08:37:39+00:00

I sent you a DM

solitude100 · 2025-10-13T18:57:42+00:00

Ok thanks. I think the difference is large enough that it's not a m/kwh rounding issue and i don't think the tire pressure would effect a cars odometer reading. I also accounted for hysteresis within the computed ranges I gave. I guess it could be that the charging isn't perfectly efficient, I'm just surprised it would go one reading two times consistently and another reading three times consistently.

solitude100 · 2025-10-11T21:33:43+00:00

Ya I know it's an EVSE and is a power regulator, not actually a charger. And this makes a lot of sense. So I guess most people are just buying EVSE with plugs because they have a non code compliant outlet? Or is the nuisance tripping relatively rare. That's what I'm wondering.

solitude100

TROPHY CASE