For Millions of Student-Loan Borrowers It's Time to Pay

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  Millions of Americans borrowed money from the federal government to go to college.

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  Almost 43 million of them are still paying that money back.

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  It's a hard number to conceptualize, right?

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  But the way I think about it is that if you don't have student loans yourself,

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  then you probably know somebody who has student loans.

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  Our colleague Oyen Ededoyen covers personal finance.

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  And for the past five years, she says,

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  paying those federal student loans felt more or less optional.

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  The Biden administration will extend the pandemic error freeze on those loan payments through August.

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  We're coming off of the piggyback of the pandemic, right?

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  And that was a period where student loans virtually didn't exist.

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  There were a lot of starts and stops when it came to student loan payments, you know.

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  A lot of people were put in forbearance.

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  A lot of people were put on pause.

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  And so it seemed like we were in this very different,

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  almost Twilight Zone effect when it came to the world.

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  Like a state of suspension.

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  Yes, exactly.

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  We were all kind of like, you know, fumbling about in outer space, not sure what the rules were.

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  And now it seems like we're back on Earth.

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