PORTLAND, Maine — Only 30 percent of student loan borrowers know when payments are set to resume, according to a recent study by the media organization U.S. News and World Report.
If you're one of the 187,000 people with student loans in Maine, starting on Oct. 1, borrowers will start accumulating interest again.
After a 3.5-year pause on payments related to student loans from the federal government and the U.S. Department of Education, borrowers will need to start making payments again come October.
The Finance Authority of Maine, or FAME, has an online resource with all of the information you need to get organized and prepared before loans go back into repayment.
Martha Johnston is the director of education for FAME, and has some tips for people to prepare to make those payments again.
"First thing is first, what I would do is once they get in and they see their dashboard, understand who their loan servicer is. Go ahead and make sure they know what that monthly payment is going to be, when the due date is, and then right away jump into looking at your monthly cash flow and your budget. We call it a spending plan. Some people don't like the word budget, but look at what your revenue is, what your income is, what your expenses are, and what can you do to fit that payment back into your monthly schedule," Johnston explained.
Johnson added not to be afraid to ask for help. If you are having trouble repaying your debt, call your student loan servicer and they could help you find a different alternative repayment option.
In Maine, there's about $6.2 billion dollars in student loan debt.
"So what we want Maine students to know, is to come to FAMEmaine.com. We've set up a resource where they can get information about what they should do to prepare, and we are telling them we want them to update, so update their information at studentaid.gov, where they will have a dashboard of all their federal student loans and they can see who their loan servicer is. We want them to update their information with their student loan servicer and create an online access to their account. We want them to plan, what's your monthly payment going to be now, when is it going to start, how do you fit that back into your budget," Johnston said.