Just in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a student loan crisis in America. The amount owed in the United States is more than $1.5 trillion dollars (Yes, that’s with a T)! There hasn’t been a lot of attention given to that figure during 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with good reason. In March of 2020, Congress approved the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act—also known as the CARES Act. You probably remember that because of the stimulus checks you received.
One aspect of the help offered to students with federal student loans was a pause in their payments along with resetting the interest rate to 0 percent. Whew! That was a relief. The pandemic forced us to focus on things more important than student loan payments, and that’s good. However, those payments just didn’t magically go away—they were just paused. The idea was to provide financial relief for borrowers so they could get their minds off student loan payments and instead focus on basic living expenses. That all sounded great!
