“All good things must come to an end.

For three and a half years, tens of millions of federal student loan borrowers have enjoyed an unprecedented respite, not only from their loan payments but from the accumulation of interest on top of those loans. Countless books and doctoral theses will be written about what that money paid for instead; what matters today, though, is that interest resumes its inexorable march come September and, in October, so do loan payments.

Here's the problem for borrowers: A lot has happened over the past few years. Their lives have likely changed – perhaps dramatically – and, like them, so has the student loan system itself. Some of the biggest loan servicers pre-pandemic are gone, their borrowers shuffled to other servicers, and a new, more generous repayment plan awaits low-income borrowers.

It's a lot to navigate – but don't worry, we're here to help. NPR's Education Desk has been covering student loans for years. We've published investigations into mismanaged loan programs, and then written about the fixes that came out of those stories. And most importantly, we've been following every development in the pandemic payment freeze. It's a lot. So...

Here's a list of 12 things borrowers should know as they return to repayment.”

“TOTENBERG: So what was the bottom line today? Unless the court decides that the states have no standing to sue and throws the case out of court, the Biden student loan forgiveness program will likely be struck down. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
”

“The Biden administration has said more than half of borrowers eligible had applied for forgiveness before the program was halted, and the Education Department approved some 16 million applications. The department recently told borrowers that the administration will discharge the debt if and when it prevails in court.
The legal battles over the debt relief plan have led the administration to extend the pause on federal student loan payments. The pandemic-era freeze, which has been extended multiple times since it was imposed by the Trump administration, had been set to expire on Dec. 31.
Payments will now resume 60 days after the Education Department is allowed to implement the program or the litigation is resolved, officials said. If that hasn’t happened by June 30, payments will resume 60 days later or on Sept. 1. The administration wants to lower borrowers’ balances, or wipe out their debt altogether, before payments resume.”

““The Justice Department, in consultation with the Department of Education, will review the information provided, apply the factors that courts consider relevant to the undue-hardship inquiry and determine whether to recommend that the bankruptcy judge discharge the borrower’s student loan debt.” In other words, there may be some cases — specific to a borrower’s overall circumstances — in which the federal government may decide not to oppose a federal student loan bankruptcy discharge, clearing the way for a borrower to eliminate their federal student loan debt without having to complete a full adversary proceeding.

“The new guidelines advise Department of Justice attorneys to stipulate to the facts demonstrating that a debt would impose an undue hardship and recommend to the court that a debtor’s student loan be discharged under certain circumstances,” according to a statement by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), which has been advocating for bankruptcy reform for student loan borrowers for years. “The guidance provides a framework for Justice [Department] attorneys to apply in evaluating the factors that courts typically consider in determining undue hardship.””

“Mr. Biden also extended a pandemic-era pause on loan payments until the end of the year. It has been in effect since March 2020.

“In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” the president said in a Twitter post outlining some details of his plan.
”

“This year’s rapid inflation rates have meant higher prices for virtually everything, including rent, food and even partying. So what comes next may not be much of a surprise: Nearly a third of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 — part of what is collectively known as Gen Z — live at home with their parents or other relatives, according to a new study, and they considered it a long-term housing solution.

The analysis comes courtesy of Credit Karma, a personal finance platform, which surveyed 1,022 young adults in the United States online between June 10 and June 15 of this year.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, flocks of young Americans were moving back home. A 2020 analysis from Zillow found that about 2.7 million adults in the United States moved in with a parent or grandparent in March and April of that year.

But what’s worth noting from the recent Credit Karma study is how living at home with family is now often viewed as a permanent housing solution, even in the midst of a strong jobs market, said Colleen McCreary, a consumer financial advocate and chief people officer at Credit Karma.”

“According to data from a survey conducted by New America released this week, the rate for default among Black borrowers is 46%, higher than all borrowers at one third and White borrowers at 28%.
Borrowers with incomes below $30,000 also report disproportionately high rates of default, about 48%.
...”

“CONTENTS

The Holding in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency
Application to Consumer Litigation
Tip # 1: Allege the Defendant’s Conduct Violates the Statute, and Not Just a Regulation
Tip #2: Show a Clear and Prominent Congressional Delegation of Authority to Issue the Rule
Tip #3: Show the Rule Is Within the Agency’s Expected Authority
Tip #4: Show the Limited Nature of the Specific Regulation
Tip # 5 Show That the Agency Had Enacted Similar Rules Over the Years”

“Washington — Concerns about inflation and personal finances have surged while COVID has evaporated as a top issue for Americans, a new poll shows, marking an upheaval in priorities just months before critical midterm elections.

Forty percent of U.S. adults specifically name inflation in an open-ended question as one of up to five priorities for the government to work on in the next year, according to a June poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That's a sharp rise from 14% in December and less than 1% the year prior. In all, 77% mention the economy in any way, up from 68% in December. But just 10% specifically mention jobs or unemployment, as U.S. employers continue to hire despite high inflation and weak economic growth.

Now, too, Americans increasingly call their personal finances a major issue: 44% mention it, up from 24% in December and 12% the year before.”

“The personal saving rate, a measure of how much money people have left over after spending and taxes, reached 5.4% in May. That figure is below the average of the last decade and far below the record of 34% in April 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Families have tapped about $114 billion of their pandemic savings so far, according to Moody’s Analytics, which analyzed government data.
….
Americans’ checking-account balances jumped after they got their pandemic stimulus payments, bank executives have said. While customers have spent some of that money, balances still remain markedly above where they were in 2019, said Chris Wheat, co-president of the JPMorgan Chase Institute, the bank’s in-house think tank. At the end of March, balances of families with the lowest incomes were 65% above 2019 levels.
Still, they used to be higher. In March 2021, around the time of the third round of federal stimulus checks, balances for those families were up 126% from 2019 levels.
JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon last month said U.S. consumers still had between six and nine months of spending power remaining in their bank accounts.”

“S. 3823 increases the Chapter 13 debt limit under 109(e) to $2.75 million, and allows both secured and unsecured debt to count towards this single limit. The bill also retains the application of this limit only to non-contingent, liquidated debts, as under the prior law. The Subchapter V debt limit of $7.5 million for small businesses electing to file for bankruptcy, which had expired on March 27, 2022, was also extended. Both increases have a sunset provision after two years from the date of enactment”

“The three are among more than 100 million people in America ― including 41% of adults ― beset by a health care system that is systematically pushing patients into debt on a mass scale, an investigation by KHN and NPR shows.
The investigation reveals a problem that, despite new attention from the White House and Congress, is far more pervasive than previously reported. That is because much of the debt that patients accrue is hidden as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans to hospitals and other medical providers.
To calculate the true extent and burden of this debt, the KHN-NPR investigation draws on a nationwide poll conducted by KFF for this project. The poll was designed to capture not just bills patients couldn’t afford, but other borrowing used to pay for health care as well. New analyses of credit bureau, hospital billing, and credit card data by the Urban Institute and other research partners also inform the project. And KHN and NPR reporters conducted hundreds of interviews with patients, physicians, health industry leaders, consumer advocates, and researchers.
The picture is bleak.
In the past five years, more than half of U.S. adults report they’ve gone into debt because of medical or dental bills, the KFF poll found.
A quarter of adults with health care debt owe more than $5,000. And about 1 in 5 with any amount of debt said they don’t expect to ever pay it off.
“Debt is no longer just a bug in our system. It is one of the main products,” said Dr. Rishi Manchanda, who has worked with low-income patients in California for more than a decade and served on the board of the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt. “We have a health care system almost perfectly designed to create debt.”
The burden is forcing families to cut spending on food and other essentials. Millions are being driven from their homes or into bankruptcy, the poll found.
...
Patient debt is piling up despite the landmark 2010 Affordable Care Act.
The law expanded insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans. Yet it also ushered in years of robust profits for the medical industry, which has steadily raised prices over the past decade.
Hospitals recorded their most profitable year on record in 2019, notching an aggregate profit margin of 7.6%, according to the federal Medicare Payment Advisory Committee. Many hospitals thrived even through the pandemic.
But for many Americans, the law failed to live up to its promise of more affordable care. Instead, they’ve faced thousands of dollars in bills as health insurers shifted costs onto patients through higher deductibles.
Now, a highly lucrative industry is capitalizing on patients’ inability to pay. Hospitals and other medical providers are pushing millions into credit cards and other loans. These stick patients with high interest rates while generating profits for the lenders that top 29%, according to research firm IBISWorld.
Patient debt is also sustaining a shadowy collections business fed by hospitals ― including public university systems and nonprofits granted tax breaks to serve their communities ― that sell debt in private deals to collections companies that, in turn, pursue patients.
“People are getting harassed at all hours of the day. Many come to us with no idea where the debt came from,” said Eric Zell, a supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. “It seems to be an epidemic.””

“”

“The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is again extending the moratorium on federal student loan payments, interest and collections, this time until summer's end, Aug. 31. The U.S. Department of Education also unveiled a plan to reset the roughly 7 million borrowers who are in default, using the pandemic pause to restore their accounts to good standing.
...
Perhaps the biggest news of today's announcement wasn't the extension itself, which was the worst-kept secret in Washington for weeks, but this vague line from the Education Department's press release:

"The Department will continue to assess the financial impacts of the pandemic on student loan borrowers and to prepare to transition borrowers smoothly back into repayment. This includes allowing all borrowers with paused loans to receive a 'fresh start' on repayment by eliminating the impact of delinquency and default and allowing them to reenter repayment in good standing."

This is big news for the roughly 7 million borrowers whose federal student loans are currently in default, many of whom had wages garnished and Social Security benefits withheld before the pandemic. When the pause eventually ends, those collections will not resume and these borrowers will be restored to good standing.

Normally, to exit default, the Education Department requires that borrowers coordinate with a default-focused loan servicing company and make nine "reasonable and affordable monthly payments... within 20 days of the due date" – and make them over the course of 10 consecutive months. With this restart, however, the Biden administration is using its pandemic authority and the ongoing repayment pause to waive this rehabilitation process.

"During the pause, we will continue our preparations to give borrowers a fresh start and to ensure that all borrowers have access to repayment plans that meet their financial situations and needs," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

It is unclear if borrowers will also have their access to federal student aid restored, meaning they can potentially take out new student loans – something borrowers in default cannot do. Nearly half of all defaulters have never finished college, and losing access to federal financial aid can make it especially challenging to go back and finish a degree.
...
Getting the word out to defaulted borrowers won't be easy
The most difficult part of the department's fresh start for borrowers in default will be finding them. According to a January report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), "the contractor managing borrowers' defaulted loans initially did not have valid email addresses for about half of the borrowers in default."

The GAO reported that the Education Department was able to provide some of the missing contacts but that addresses are still missing for about 1 in 4 defaulted borrowers.

According to the report, "Education is planning to reach these borrowers by using other outreach channels to share messages about rehabilitation options," including through social media.

”

“The federal government’s emergency rental assistance program helped prevent more than one million evictions last year.

An estimated 1.36 million renters avoided an eviction filing in 2021 as a result of the government’s unprecedented $46.5 billion rent relief program and other protections, according to a recent analysis by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab published earlier this month.

Treasury officials reported Wednesday that $30 billion in emergency rent relief was spent or obligated by the end of February. Despite a slow and confusing initial roll out of the program last spring, more than 4.7 million payments were made to households since January 2021.

Treasury expects the remainder of the funds to be exhausted by the middle of this year.
”

“Bankruptcy Code § 104(b) provides that the exemption amounts and other dollar figures in the Code are automatically adjusted for inflation every three years. The adjustments are based on changes to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers published by the Dept. of Labor, rounded to the nearest $25.

New dollar amounts take effect on April 1, 2022, and will apply to all cases filed on or after that date. Many lower-income bankruptcy filers already can retain all or almost all of their assets in a chapter 7 bankruptcy. The new higher exemption amounts mean that it is even more likely that consumers can protect their assets in a chapter 7 filing.
”

“Following the lead of California, Colorado, and Virginia, Utah is set to become the fourth state to pass a comprehensive privacy law”

“The Education Department will not seize the tax refunds parents get from the enhanced child tax credit in order to satisfy past-due student loan payments, according to an agency spokesperson.

Consumer advocates had been worried millions of borrowers who’ve defaulted on their federal student loans would get part of the credit seized this tax season. A federal pause on student loans protects borrowers’ tax refunds issued before May 1, but those received afterward aren’t legally protected.

The Education Department official said the agency won’t withhold refunds attributable to the child tax credit for borrowers in default. The agency clarified its position after CNBC published a story Tuesday morning about the issue, for which the bureau did not initially offer a comment.

“The continued pause on student loan payments has helped protect Child Tax Credits for millions of borrowers, including those in default,” the official, who spoke on condition of background, wrote in an e-mailed statement. “The Department of Education will ensure that families will not see their CTC benefits garnished through Treasury offset this tax season, including those refunds issued after May 1.”
”

“Many low-income New Yorkers typically cannot afford a lawyer to respond to low-dollar demands in debt collection suits. Pro bono counsels are in short supply, and many defendants will simply fail to respond, the suit says. That leads to “default judgments entered without any adversarial testing, notwithstanding evidence that debt collection suits often lack merit or demand,” the suit says.

The pastor, the Rev. John Udo-Okon, is a Pentecostal minister at Word of Life Christian Fellowship International. His low-income congregants “don’t know how to fight back” when they face a debt collection suit, he told the New York Times.

“They just give up,” he said, only to learn “that their credit has been destroyed.”

Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School who led an access-to-justice initiative in the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, said rules that prevent nonlawyers from helping people fill out simple legal forms help protect lawyers from competition.

“If you want a test case to bring sanity, as well as constitutional values to a process in which the legal profession has edged out both, this is it,” he told the New York Times.
”

“Before the pandemic, about one-quarter of the state’s households occupied by renters spent more than half their income on rent and some utilities. In New York City, where many renters live, the problem is even more acute, with one-third of households in that category.

The pandemic only made things worse. The state has received more than 291,000 applications for a pandemic rent relief program since last summer, reflecting the vast number of people behind on rent. That program has nearly run out of money.
...
Many politicians and housing groups agree that the moratorium was only meant to be a stopgap during an extraordinary crisis. But its end marks a pivotal moment, setting the stage for a fraught political battle.

...
Ms. Hochul said this week that she and state lawmakers were discussing next steps. On Thursday, she and the governors of California, New Jersey and Illinois sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Treasury calling for more rent relief to states with high numbers of renters.

Elected officials and housing advocates worry that the end of the moratorium could reverberate far beyond housing court, leading to an uptick in crime, homelessness, mental health issues, coronavirus outbreaks and more. A moratorium on commercial evictions and foreclosures also ends on Saturday.
...
State and local officials around the country are trying to find ways to keep people in their homes.

On Wednesday, the mayor of Seattle extended an eviction moratorium through mid-February, citing the recent surge in coronavirus cases. Last week, New Mexico’s court system announced a new pilot program to encourage landlords and tenants to tap into rent relief funds and avoid evictions.

It’s not clear what will happen in New York housing courts after the moratorium ends. After the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s eviction moratorium in August, many parts of the country saw a gradual increase in cases, though levels remained below prepandemic levels, according to a December analysis of eviction filings from the Eviction Lab.

Given the expiration of the federal moratorium, “this is a better place than I think many people would have expected,” said Peter Hepburn, a sociology professor at Rutgers University in Newark and a research fellow at the Eviction Lab.

That may be because many landlords have managed to weather the pandemic, in part because they cut expenses, according to several studies. Government aid programs, like the more than $46 billion rent relief effort, have also helped.”

“Effective today, federal law bans many types of out-of-network medical bills and puts the onus on doctors and health insurance companies to resolve their payment disputes.

Why it matters: Consumers can breathe a sigh of relief because, in many scenarios, they should no longer face unexpected charges from doctors who are not in their insurance networks.

How it works: Patients still have to pay in-network copays, deductibles and other cost-sharing, which have been rising, but any additional out-of-network bills are now prohibited for the following services:

Emergency care in a hospital ER, a freestanding ER or urgent care center.
Elective care at an in-network hospital or surgery center, but where doctors — notably anesthesiologists, pathologists, radiologists and assistant surgeons — may be out-of-network. This is also known as "drive-by doctoring."
Air ambulances.
Of note: Ground ambulances are not included in this law, meaning three out of four insured people who take an ambulance ride are still at risk of facing surprise bills.

Behind the scenes: Instead of sending out bills, doctors and insurance companies have to resolve their differences while holding the patient harmless.

”

“NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with KPBS's Cristina Kim on her enterprise reporting on what happens to vulnerable renters as pandemic eviction bans begin to go away.”

“Americans stashed away $2.7 trillion in excess savings over the pandemic even as inflation rates hit a record high.”

“A Brooklyn-based nonprofit, Upsolve, is trying to help cut those costs. Constant’s web search for a cheaper resolution led her to the Upsolve website, where users can download an app that helps them file for no charge and without hiring an attorney.”

“To be eligible for reimbursement, death certificates for those who died after May 16, 2020, must indicate that the death was attributed to COVID-19.

For deaths that occurred in the early months of the pandemic — from Jan. 20 to May 16, 2020 — death certificates must be accompanied with a signed statement from a medical examiner, coroner or the certifying official listed on the certificate indicating that COVID-19 was the cause or a contributing cause of death.

The percentage of individuals who have been reimbursed varies dramatically from state to state — from nearly 40% in North Carolina and Maryland to fewer than 15% in Idaho and Oregon, according to state-by-state data compiled by FEMA.
...
The program has been funded using federal stimulus funds, and money remains available. No online applications are allowed.

After all required documents are received and verified, it typically takes fewer than 30 days to determine if an individual is eligible, according to FEMA. Once eligibility is confirmed, applicants who request direct deposit may receive the money in a matter of days. It may take longer for applicants who request a check.
”

“In Part 1 of a 2 part series, KPBS Race and Equity reporter Cristina Kim looks at the efforts to keep people housed here in San Diego County. We talk about what worked, and who fell through the cracks, and what’s next for the region’s renters and landlords as housing becomes increasingly more expensive and protections evaporate. We also learn about the toll that the threat of evictions places on families and children.”

“The next, and possibly final payment from the expanded child tax credit is set to go out Wednesday, Dec. 15. The program, which was passed in March as part of President Biden's American Rescue Plan, sends monthly checks to eligible families with children: up to $300 per month for every child under the age of six, and $250 per month for children ages 6-17. The amount phases down for families who have higher incomes. The payments started going out in July.

Studies have shown that the monthly payments have helped to significantly reduce child poverty and child hunger in the country. The White House says the program has the potential to could cut child poverty in half.

But because plans to continue the payments are tied to the president's Build Back Better social spending bill that remains stalled in Congress, it is still unclear whether the monthly checks will continue into the new year.”

“Infusions of government cash that warded off an economic calamity have left millions of households with bigger bank balances than before the pandemic — savings that have driven a torrent of consumer spending, helped pay off debts and, at times, reduced the urgency of job hunts.

But many low-income Americans find their savings dwindling or even depleted. And for them, the economic recovery is looking less buoyant.

Over the past 18 months or so, experts have been closely tracking the multitrillion-dollar increase in what economists call “excess savings,” generally defined as the amount by which people’s cash reserves during the Covid-19 crisis exceeded what they would have normally saved.

According to Moody’s Analytics, an economic research firm, these excess savings among many working- and middle-class households could be exhausted as soon as early next year — not only reducing their financial cushions but also potentially affecting the economy, since consumer spending is such a large share of activity.”

“89% of full-time employed student loan borrowers say they’re not financially secure enough to begin making payments after Feb 1.

Respondents of this survey say that student loan payments will eat a large portion of their income and prevent them from affording other bills like rent, car loans and medicine. These findings are doubly concerning within the context of the nation’s rising inflation and cost of living.

Among fully-employed student loan borrowers, 89% say they are not financially secure enough to resume payments on February 1. One-in-five say (21%) they will never be financially secure enough to resume payments again.
More than half (57%) of borrowers surveyed were notified about payments resuming on February 1 by their loan servicer and one-third (33%) heard this news directly from the Department of Education. These are significant increases compared to the last survey in June that showed only 30% and 22% had heard from their servicer and the Department respectively.
Over a quarter (27%) of respondents say that one-third of their income or more will go toward student loans when payments resume in February. One-in-ten say that half of their income will go toward student loan payments.
88% of respondents say that COVID-19 relief for federal student loans was critical to their financial well-being during the pandemic. 87% say that COVID-19 student loan relief made it possible to afford other bills during the pandemic.
Even as the economy returns, 44% of fully-employed student loan borrowers said they cannot afford their monthly student loan payments or are in loan default.
As the Department of Education continues the rollout of the PSLF waiver, one-third (36%) of 501(c)(3) and nonprofit employees said they were not aware of recent changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that makes it easier to receive forgiveness.
45% of respondents say their financial wellness is currently poor or very poor while only 25% said that was the case prior to the pandemic.
”

“Federal student loan payments have been paused until Jan. 31, 2022, as part of the CARES Act to protect borrowers from delinquency during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as this forbearance period comes to an end, many borrowers feel unprepared to resume payments.

The vast majority (89%) of federal student loan borrowers who are fully employed said they are not financially secure enough to resume payments in February, according to a survey from the Student Debt Crisis Center. More than a fifth (21%) of respondents said that they would never be ready to resume payments.

Additionally, 88% of student loan borrowers said that coronavirus relief for federal loans was critical to their financial wellness during the pandemic.

But the federal student loan payment pause comes to an end in just 70 days, which means that borrowers will need to prepare their finances to avoid missing payments. Going into default on your student debt can lead to late fees, negative credit impacts and even wage garnishment. ”