INDIANA – As the Biden administration weighs whether to extend the current moratorium on student loan payments beyond May 1, Student Loan Hero sought to gauge Americans’ feelings towards a potential resumption in payments.
Released this morning, the online student debt education platform’s survey of more than 1,000 student loan borrowers found that 72% of federal loan borrowers say they’re not financially ready to resume monthly payments.
KEY FINDINGS
- 72% of federal loan borrowers say they’re not financially ready to resume submitting monthly payments. That jumps to 86% among borrowers whose income was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and hasn’t returned to normal.
- More than half of borrowers who haven’t made federal loan payments put their monthly savings toward necessary expenses, such as housing costs or groceries (52%). Others used the money to pay off other debts (30%) and get back onto their feet financially (28%).
- 78% of borrowers with federal or private student loans that don’t qualify for the moratorium have faced difficulty making their monthly payments throughout the pandemic. And crippling student debt isn’t a new trend: 39% of all borrowers had significant trouble affording their student loan payments even before the pandemic.
- One possible solution: 73% of those who have refinanced their student debt say doing so made their payments more manageable. However, just 12% of borrowers have refinanced.
Full report >> https://studentloanhero.com/featured/resuming-payments-survey/
