Medora Lee
Appearances
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
So seriously delinquent means that you are 90 plus days overdue for your payment. So TransUnion did a study and they took a look at what's been happening. And they said that seriously delinquent student loan borrowers are at an all-time high of 20.5% through February. And that compares to just 11.5% in February 2020, which is just before the pandemic started.
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
And even worse, they say that could be understated. Because more and more outstanding student loans that are being paid are being reported each month. So they think that more than one in five student loan bars with a payment due have been reported as seriously delinquent, but the figure could be much higher.
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
So this is a really big deal because if you're seriously delinquent, you can start seeing major hits on your credit scores. And if you get a major hit on your credit score, that will put you even further into a hole because that'll increase the cost of anything that you borrow, like loans or even limit how much people can borrow. So people might want to kind of think about that.
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
I know it's a shock, but everybody sort of knew that the student loan payments were going to resume soon. And I know it comes at this kind of bad time when the economy looks like it's slowing. But if there's any way that you can make any sort of payments, you probably should, because that could really haunt you for a while.
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
It's actually those people that are seen as prime or top tier borrowers that usually see the largest hit to their credit cards for serious delinquencies and defaults. And even though there's a lower percentage of these prime borrowers or super prime borrowers, that were seriously delinquent.
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
Those who did ultimately default saw the biggest impact to their credit scores just because they don't have a lot of bad marks on their score so far. So it turns out that they will see the biggest declines.
The Excerpt
19 states sue RFK Jr., Trump administration for overhauling HHS
They will. I think FICO was the first one to sound the alarm bell on this problem last month. It said they expect a lot more borrowers to fall into this area soon. So in February, they estimate about 2.7 million student loan borrowers had severe delinquencies. And they expected that between March and April, possibly more than 5 million more will get reported.