Lynnette dives deep into the CARES Act and shares a pleasant surprise in the economic relief bill.

Transcript

Lynnette Khalfani Cox: Hi, there. It’s Lynnette Khalfani Cox, the money coach. I’m here with some good news about something you might not have heard about in the economic relief measures recently passed by Congress, including the CARES Act.

Did you know that the Feds have given some financial relief to millions of people who owed federal debts but couldn’t afford them? That’s right.

If you owed, say, the IRS, and you were in collections, maybe for a bill that you owed from 2018, 2017, 2016, sometime back in the past, and you had not been able to pay off that debt, right now, you don’t have to make any payments on that obligation.

No principal payments, no interest, no collections account, no extra fees being added to your balances. That’s really good news. Ditto for those of you who might have had federal student loan debt that went into default status.

Right now, they’ve put all that on hold. They’re not charging you any extra penalties or payments. Not again for your interest charges, not extra fees that get tacked on there. This, again, is good news for those of you who have been struggling with federal student loans.

As a matter of fact, they are even refunding money $1.8 billion in federal student loans funds that had been paid out by people who went into default status. That’s those of you who recently went into default as of March 13th, when President Trump declared the coronavirus a national disaster.

Again, this is a bit of good news for those of you who had been having financial troubles, even before coronavirus hit.