Borrowers need to act by April 30 to qualify for student loan forgiveness

There’s a student loan forgiveness opportunity available to many borrowers, but they’ll have to act by April 30 to qualify, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says.

The U.S. Department of Education is conducting a one-time adjustment of borrowers’ payments this summer, and those who request a consolidation by the end of this month — which will leave them with one, larger loan — could get their debt canceled immediately or sooner than they would have otherwise.

“The one-time adjustment is designed to count more of the payments you made, so they can be added to the payments required for cancellation,” the CFPB says.

Here’s what to know.

Income-driven repayment plans, which date to 1994, set borrowers’ monthly payments based on a share of their discretionary income. Those payments are typically lower than under standard repayment, and can be zero under some plans.

Borrowers typically get any remaining debt forgiven after 10, 20 or 25 years, depending on the plan.

One complicating factor for borrowers in these programs is that they often have multiple loans, taken out at different times, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

“They get at least one new loan each year in school, on average,” he said.

That can mean a borrower has multiple timelines to forgiveness, one for each of those loans.

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Now, the Biden administration is temporarily offering borrowers the chance to combine their loans and to get credit going back as far as their first loan payment on the oldest of their original loans in that bundle.

This could be a good deal for many, experts say.

For example, say a borrower graduated from college in 2004, took out more loans for a graduate…