26 Aug 2024

Student loans: 1 in 3 borrowers have slowed repayment

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By Joe Yerardi | NerdWallet

About 43 million Americans hold federal student loan debt and, for some, paying off that debt can be a burden. Many borrowers have access to programs that can pause or reduce their payments, but a new survey finds some borrowers may be forgoing the proper channels and stopping repayment entirely in hopes of student loan forgiveness.

Nearly one in three (31%) student loan borrowers have slowed the repayment of their loan(s) because they hope to see their loans reduced or forgiven by the federal government, according to a recent NerdWallet survey conducted online by The Harris Poll among more than 600 U.S. adults who currently have student loans. And nearly one in four (23%) have stopped their student loan payments altogether for the same reason.

Notably, the survey didn’t ask whether borrowers who slowed or stopped their repayments did so after entering into forbearance or deferment plans. Further, student loan delinquencies have remained largely unchanged since the COVID-19 payment pause ended last October, according to data from the New York Fed. This is likely due to a one-year “on-ramp” grace period set to expire Sept. 30, during which the Department of Education is not reporting any borrowers who miss payments as delinquent.

A worry for borrowers, and a top election issue

Despite the Supreme Court blocking the Biden Administration’s broad plan to cut up to $20,000 in student loan debt per eligible borrower last June, the White House has forgiven roughly $168.5 billion over the last four years, largely through existing forgiveness programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans. The president’s current “plan B” student loan forgiveness plan would reduce or eliminate loan debt for a more targeted group of individuals.

There’s no guarantee this plan or anything resembling it will go into effect. Just as legal challenges derailed the administration’s first, broader push for debt relief, lawsuits could force the administration or its successor to further scale back this set of proposals. This fall’s elections could also determine how debt relief proceeds — if at all.

Borrowers seem to have taken note.

A quarter (25%) say they are concerned recent student loan forgiveness efforts will be reversed by the courts. And more than one in five (22%) say that student loan forgiveness is one of the most important issues when choosing a presidential candidate.

Not paying student loans can hurt you

There are consequences if you fail to keep up with your student loan payments.

If you have federal student loans, loans become delinquent as soon as you miss a payment. Loan servicers can begin charging late fees 30 days after that. After three months, servicers may begin reporting the debt to credit reporting agencies, dragging down your credit score. Eventually, student loans enter default and your loan holder will be able to garnish your wages and withhold tax refunds and Social Security payments from you.

The default process happens even faster for student loans held by private lenders.

Pick the repayment plan that’s right for you

While the repercussions of not paying student loans can be serious, the good news is you have several repayment options for federal student loans. (Private student loan repayment options vary by lender.) Use the Education Department’s loan simulator to estimate your monthly bills and overall repayment journey under different repayment plans.

Standard repayment: Under this plan, you’ll pay the same amount each month for a decade. This is generally the fastest way to pay loans off, and therefore you may pay less total interest. You’re placed into this plan by default when repayment begins.

Income-driven repayment: If payments under standard repayment seem too high, you can apply for income-driven repayment (IDR). Under IDR plans, you’ll pay a portion (usually 10-20%) of your discretionary income each month for a set period of time (usually 20-25 years), after which your remaining debt will be forgiven.

Graduated payment: Consider the graduated payment plan if an IDR plan isn’t a good fit, but you want to lower your monthly bill right now. Under this 10-year plan, your payment will start low and increase every two years. The advantage is you’ll be able to free up money in the short term for other needs. The downside is you may end up paying more in interest than under the standard repayment plan.

Extended repayment: If you owe more than $30,000 in loans, you can apply for the extended repayment plan. This plan gives you up to 25 years to repay your loans and you can choose to pay the same amount each month or a gradually increasing amount as under the graduated plan.

Borrowers seem to be taking advantage of these options, as a third (33%) say they’ve changed their student loan repayment plan in order to make their payments more manageable, according to the recent survey.

Before defaulting on your loans, consider deferment, forbearance or an IDR plan

If you simply can’t afford to make any student loan payments right now, you still have options: namely, deferment and forbearance. More than a quarter (27%) of student loan borrowers have used one or both of these programs to pause their federal loan payments, according to the survey.

Both pause your payments and protect your credit from taking the hit it otherwise would if you simply stopped making payments. But the similarities end there.

First, look into deferment. Under deferment, interest does not accrue on your subsidized federal student or Perkins loans while payments are paused (interest will continue to accrue on unsubsidized federal or private student loans).

You must meet a qualifying life event in order to qualify for deferment. Qualifying events include attending school at least half time, being active duty military or in the Peace Corps, experiencing unemployment or earning less than 150% of your state’s poverty guidelines, receiving some forms of public assistance or undergoing cancer treatment.

If you don’t qualify for deferment, consider forbearance. Under forbearance, interest will continue to accrue on your loans (whether federal student loans or private loans) while repayment is paused, and you’ll be limited to a 12-month break from payments.

An income-driven repayment plan can also help you manage payments. If you’ve lost your income, or you earn under a certain threshold, you may qualify for $0 payments under an IDR plan — and you’ll still make progress towards IDR forgiveness while making these $0 payments. Even if you don’t qualify for $0 payments, IDR plans can lower your bills to a more manageable level.

The complete survey methodology is available in the original article, published at NerdWallet.

More From NerdWallet

Full FAFSA Launch by Dec. 1: What Students and Families Need To Know
Direct Admissions: How to Get Into College Without Applying
Some Federal Student Loan Interest Rates at Record Highs

Joe Yerardi writes for NerdWallet. Email: jyerardi@nerdwallet.com.

The article Student Loans: 1 in 3 Borrowers Have Slowed Repayment originally appeared on NerdWallet.

26 Aug 2024

How to plan for your medical bill like a health reporter

by | posted in: Society | 0

Having a baby is about the ultimate “shoppable” health care experience, since you have roughly nine months to pick where to deliver.

As a health reporter, I have more experience with hospital prices than many people, so I thought I’d use my own situation of choosing where to have my baby as a demonstration of how to figure out what you might pay when you know you’ll need care.

For years, people who study the economics of health care have debated whether giving people more transparent information about prices will result in savings for the patient and the system as a whole.

Studies haven’t found significant changes in consumer behavior — a January poll found only about 17% of people feel they know what their care will cost before they get it — but the federal government and the state of Colorado have continued to pass laws to make it easier to find and compare prices.

While I’m searching for information about a birth, you can use these same basic steps for any planned hospital visit. This guidance doesn’t apply in emergency situations, though.

If you’re having severe chest pain, feel weak on one side of your body or are bleeding profusely, skip all this and get to the nearest emergency room. Federal and state laws should protect you from surprise bills, and as painful as fighting your insurance company after the fact may be, you don’t want to risk death by delaying care.

Step 1: Find out which hospitals are in-network

In my case, this was pretty easy. My workplace insurance is through Kaiser Permanente Colorado, which also owns the medical practice where I receive prenatal care, so my doctor knew which hospitals are in-network.

If your situation is different, you’ll most likely need to call your insurance company for this one. Asking the hospital if they take your plan won’t get you the answer you need — they might say they accept your insurance, but if you’ve gone out-of-network, you could be stuck with a significant bill.

Even if the hospital is in-network with your insurance, you might get a provider who isn’t. Unless you’re having a planned cesarean or induction, you have no way of knowing which obstetrician or anesthesiologist will be on call when labor starts. Colorado state law and the federal No Surprises Act both forbid billing patients at the higher out-of-network rate in those situations, provided they’ve gone to an in-network hospital. (They also don’t allow those higher bills for emergencies.)

Step 2: Find out likely costs

Basically every hospital is required to either display a list of prices for common “shoppable” services or to offer a price-estimating tool. The tools vary in how much personal information they ask for, and those that demand more tend to produce more accurate estimates.

In my case, the tools estimated a roughly $1,100 cost at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree, or $1,700 at either Good Samaritan Hospital in Lafayette or Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver. The estimates were based on my insurance requiring me to pay one-fifth of my hospitalization cost.

You may be sick of calling your insurance company, but you should probably double-check your costs, because the estimate tools don’t make any promises.

You might also want to look up a few scenarios. Most people plan on an uncomplicated vaginal birth, but you might want to know what you could pay if you need a cesarean or have complications. Speaking of which…

Step 3: Figure out your worst-case scenario

If you’re the kind of person who wants to know the full range of what you could face, you’ll want to be familiar with your out-of-pocket maximum, which is what it sounds like: the ceiling of what you could spend on medical care in a given year. Most plans have a separate, higher out-of-pocket max if you go to an out-of-network hospital, though.

Most insurance companies will have a feature on their websites that allows you to see how much you’ve spent so far this year, and how that compares to your maximum spending. If yours doesn’t, you’ll have to call your insurer again to answer this one. (Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.)

In my case, I’m getting close to the out-of-pocket maximum because of some medical expenses at the start of the year, so the cost difference between my three options is minimal. If you have many thousands of dollars left to go until your max, though, you could have significantly different bills, particularly if you have complications.

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Step 4: Consider non-financial priorities

You don’t have to complete this step, but not everything important translates into dollar amounts.

In my case, two of the three in-network hospitals would require a highway drive, which made them less appealing to me. I don’t relish time spent on Interstate 25 under any circumstances, and sitting in traffic while in labor sounds like an experience I’d rather avoid.

Your priorities may be different, though. Maybe you had a great previous experience, or a terrible one, at one of your hospital options. Maybe you place great value on the closest possible location. Maybe you want a religious hospital, or prefer to avoid one. Ultimately, only you can decide what matters most to you.

A final thought

Things can go wrong even if you’ve done everything right. Your best bet is to get any prices you were quoted or promises that all providers are in-network in writing. It doesn’t eliminate the chance of a billing error, but it would give you some ammunition to fight back.

26 Aug 2024

French DJ and LGBTQ+ icon carries Paralympic torch to defy hate she endured over Olympics ceremony

by | posted in: All news | 0

PARIS (AP) — French performer Barbara Butch carried the Paralympic torch Sunday evening in an act of defiance after being targeted by hate speech over her appearance in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

“I chose not to be afraid to exist in the public space,” Barbara Butch, a popular DJ and LGBTQ+ icon said in an interview with broadcaster France Info before walking onstage with the torch at a musical event in Saint-Cloud, a western suburb of Paris. “I know I represent France in the same way as anyone else,” she added.

The performer filed a formal legal complaint alleging online abuse after suffering online harassment, death threats and insults following her performance in the July 26 Olympics opening show. Five other artists and performers, including the ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, made similar complaints after suffering a torrent of abuse.

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Butch said she has received “tens of thousands of hate messages.” A specialized team has managed to identify “hundreds of people who had sent … the most violet messages,” she said.

“Justice will do its job and then we will tackle the international level,” Butch said.

Butch was among nearly 1,000 torch bearers – who will carry the Paralympic flame, split between 12 torches, to 50 cities across France in the next few days to highlight communities that are committed to promoting inclusion in sport and building awareness of living with disabilities.

Other torch bearers include former Paralympians, young para athletes, volunteers from Paralympic federations, innovators of advanced technological support, people who dedicate their lives to others with impairments and people who work in the nonprofit sector to support careers.

The 12 flames will become one again when the relay ends in central Paris on Wednesday after visiting historical sites along the city’s famed boulevards and plazas before lightening the cauldron during the three-hour opening ceremony.

Follow AP’s Paralympics coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games

26 Aug 2024

Fireworks in August? Why not? Stillwater reschedules Fourth of July celebration for Saturday

by | posted in: All news | 0

It’s never too late to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Flooding on the St. Croix River forced Stillwater officials to postpone the city’s Fourth of July fireworks show, so city officials instead decided to hold the show at dusk on Saturday. Estimated start time is 9 p.m.

Spectators are asked to bring lawn chairs – and maybe a picnic basket – to either Lowell Park or Pioneer Park to watch the free fireworks display. RES Specialty Pyrotechnics, based in Belle Plaine, Minn., is producing the show.

In addition to the fireworks, spectators can watch a Civil War cannon salute in Lowell Park and listen to live music in Pioneer Park.

Civil War reenactors representing Battery I, 1st Regiment of the U.S. Artillery, a field artillery battery of the U.S. Army between 1821 and 1901, will be doing cannon-firing demonstrations at 3, 4, 5 and 7 p.m. at Mulberry Point in Lowell Park, 201 Water St.

The St. Croix Jazz Orchestra will be playing from 6-8 p.m. at Pioneer Park, 515 Second Street N.

For more information, go to stillwatermn.gov.

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