Your Money: A Hub for Help During the Coronavirus Crisis

In general, you have to call your loan servicer to request a waiver and to make sure that your loan is eligible. If you are already more than 31 days late, your loan servicer will suspend your payments automatically. Your servicer will not charge interest during this time, and the waiver is not supposed to hurt your credit score.

The waiver does not apply to private student loans. One big private lender, Sallie Mae, said it is offering suspension of payment for up to three months, with no damage to a borrower’s credit. Another one, Navient, made an identical offer for “qualified” borrowers; a spokesman said that you just need to contact the company and explain how your financial situation has changed.

A third big private lender, Wells Fargo, says it will offer help, but a spokesman said the bank would not commit to a set number of months or any other specifics.

Using the waiver to pause your federal student loan payments may not be the best move for people in distress. If your income has fallen dramatically, it may be better to enter an income-driven repayment program. Low-income borrowers enrolled in those programs often end up with no monthly payments for as long as their income stays low.

If you do make any changes to what you’re paying, don’t forget to adjust any automatic payments you have set up, said Bonnie Latreille of the Student Borrower Protection Center.

Last week, the federal government announced an automatic student loan interest waiver for federally-held loans. That remains in effect if you don’t request the new payment waiver. But the interest waiver alone doesn’t lower your monthly payment: Instead, you’d pay what you normally do, and the full amount will go toward the loan’s principal. Ron’s column explains the details.

You have three more months to file your federal taxes

The federal government has moved the tax filing deadline to July 15. You don’t have to file your return or make payments until then, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wrote on Twitter.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-money-unemployment.html