New rules let borrowers skip two months of federal student loan payments.

Transcript

Lynnette Khalfani Cox: Here’s some good news for those of you out there who’ve been making student loan payments. The federal government just announced a suspension of all federal student loan payments for the next 60 days, and they’re waiving the interest charges as well.

This is really big because 44 million Americans have federal student loans, and the average student loan repayment is $383 a month. Those of you who are already struggling even before the coronavirus hit and wrecked the whole economy, you should really take advantage of this.

Here’s how you got to do it. You have to get on the phone and call your loan servicer and let them know that you do in fact want to suspend or put off making your payments for these 60 days. It does not happen automatically, so it does require a little bit of legwork on your part.