After a more than three-year pause, borrowers will have to restart paying their federal student loan bills in October.
The Biden administration had intended to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt for millions of borrowers before payments resumed, but its proposed student loan forgiveness program was struck down by the Supreme Court and won't take effect.
Payments were set to resume in October and interest was to restart accumulating on September 1 regardless of how the Supreme Court ruled on the one-time student loan forgiveness program.
What borrowers should do now
Borrowers typically receive their bill statements from their loan servicer a few weeks before they are due. Not every borrower's bill is due at the same time of the month.
The Department of Education has said that it will be in direct communication with borrowers and ramp up its communication with student loan servicers before repayment resumes.
Student loan experts recommend that borrowers reach out to their student loan servicer with any questions about their loans as soon as possible, especially if they are interested in enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan. Those plans, which set payments based on income and family size, can lower monthly payments but require borrowers to submit some paperwork.
Borrowers will also have to reauthorize the automatic debit from their accounts to pay their monthly loan bill even if they authorized the withdrawals before the pause began.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators warns that borrowers may need to have patience when contacting their student loan servicer, which might be overwhelmed with a high volume of inquiries at this time.
"It is possible you may not reach your servicer via phone the first time you call, and you may need to call a few times before getting connected," the group says.
Federal student loan borrowers can check the Federal Student Aid website for updates on resuming payments.
Some borrowers could be at risk of default
Some borrowers may struggle to resume paying their monthly student loan bills, which were typically between $200 and $299 before the pause went into effect, according to the Federal Reserve.
More student loan borrowers are currently behind on other kinds of bills than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a recent study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The report also said that about 1 in 5 student loan borrowers have at least two risk factors that suggest they could struggle when scheduled payments resume, like being delinquent on student loan payments before the pandemic or having multiple student loan servicers.
When payments restart, many people might be confused about how much they owe, when to pay and how. Millions of borrowers will have a different servicer handling their student loans since the last time they made a payment. Some people may have been in school when the pause started and will be making a payment for the first time.
Originally, the pause on federal student loan payments was put in place in March 2020 to help borrowers struggling financially due to the pandemic. It was extended a total of eight times under both the Biden and Trump administrations, but a law passed in early June to address the debt ceiling officially prevented the pause from being extended again.
From a jobs perspective, the economy has largely recovered from the pandemic-related disruptions. In May, 3.7 million more people were working than in February 2020.
But there are some soft spots. Major layoffs have recently been announced at big companies like Disney and Amazon. Earlier this year, a regional banking crisis was set off by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis. And inflation remains high but is cooling after reaching a 40-year peak last year.
