Finance

Biden asks Supreme Court to lift block on student loan repayment plan

Published

8 months ago

August 16, 2024

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Student loan borrowers enrolled in SAVE won’t have to make payments while the courts decide the program’s fate. (iStock)

President Joe Biden’s administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift a block on the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which is designed to ease the burden of student loan debt for millions of borrowers.

Biden introduced SAVE after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. The White House said that the SAVE plan could lower borrowers’ monthly payments to zero dollars, reduce monthly costs in half and save those who make payments at least $1,000 yearly. Additionally, borrowers with an original balance of $12,000 or less will receive forgiveness of any remaining balance after making 10 years of payments.

Legal challenges from Republican-led states resulted in a temporary block of the program until the litigation concluded. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a preliminary injunction blocking the SAVE student loan repayment plan. The block prevents the Department of Education from offering the plan while litigation continues. In the meantime, borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan are being moved into forbearance while the Biden administration defends the plan in court.

“We remain committed to supporting borrowers and fighting for the most affordable repayment options possible for millions of people across the country,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “Already, we’ve approved $169 billion in relief for nearly 4.8 million Americans entitled to relief under various programs, including teachers, veterans, and other public servants; students who were cheated by their colleges; borrowers with disabilities; and more. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and I are committed to fighting for college affordability for all.”

Private student loan borrowers can’t benefit from federal loan relief. But you could lower your monthly payments by refinancing to a lower interest rate. Visit Credible to speak with an expert and get your questions answered.

PRIVATE STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS: 7 OPTIONS

Less than half of all borrowers make payments

Roughly 40% of borrowers are current on their student loan payments since they resumed in October following a three-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.

As of January 31, 2024, nearly a quarter of borrowers in repayment (7.3 million) were enrolled in the SAVE repayment plan. Because of the court order injunction, these borrowers will not have to make payments on their student loans while the litigation is ongoing and will not accrue interest on their loans during the forbearance.

However, the time spent in forbearance won’t count towards Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) forgiveness. PSLF forgives federal student loans after 10 years of qualifying payments, or 120 payments, for borrowers who work full-time for a qualifying government or nonprofit organization. IDR plans have a loan forgiveness benefit after a required repayment term of 20 or 25 years, depending on the plan.

“This injunction, if allowed to stand, would harm borrowers who have dutifully repaid their loans for up to 25 years by denying forgiveness that has been available under law for three decades,” Cardona said.

If you’re having trouble making payments on your private student loans, you won’t benefit from federal relief. However, you could consider refinancing your loans for a lower interest rate to lower your monthly payments. Visit Credible to get your personalized rate in minutes.

HOW MUCH CAN I BORROW IN STUDENT LOANS?

Poll shows fewer adults support debt forgiveness

According to a recent AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll, less than half of Americans (39%) said they supported federal student debt cancellation.

Americans were more likely to support forgiveness of some or all of a student loan debt in certain situations, like if the borrower was defrauded or misled by their school or in cases where the borrower made on-time payments for 20 years or the loans accrued more interest than originally borrowed. Other reasons Americans may support debt cancellation is if the borrowers attended school at an institution that left them with a large amount of debt compared to their income or if they are experiencing financial hardship.

“In recent years, more than a million borrowers who were defrauded by the schools they attended have received debt relief from the government, and the survey shows that forgiveness under such circumstances is supported by a majority of Americans,” University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Associate Professor Lesley Turner said. “Although existing forgiveness policies may receive less attention than broad-based student loan forgiveness plans, such as the one overturned by the Supreme Court in 2023, they are an important source of relief for the most vulnerable borrowers – those who took on debt but did not necessarily benefit from their investment in the ways they hoped.”

If you hold private student loans, you could lower your monthly payments by refinancing to a lower interest rate. Visit Credible to speak with an expert and get your questions answered.

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Finance

More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

Published

3 hours ago

April 26, 2025

Business Finance News

People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.