Hello everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

For many federal student loan borrowers, the past few years probably felt like whiplash. You had the Biden administration attempting to pass the sweeping student loan forgiveness and create more affordable repayment options,

but most of those ended up struck down or held up in court.

As a result, many borrowers haven't had to make a payment in years.

And then the one big beautiful bill act passed last year is set to overhaul the

repayment system this year. So where we stand is a little bit confusing and it matters whether

you have student loans or not. So here to make us smart about all of this is Betsy Mayotte,

founder and president of the nonprofit, the Institute of Student Loan Advisors. Welcome to the show, Betsy.

Thank you. So like I said, the past several years have been kind of chaotic in the world of federal financial aid. What have you been hearing from student loan borrowers about this?

Confusion, anxiety, feeling sort of stuck because they don't know what to do to successfully

manage their loans because of all the changes and is there going to be more changes.

So one of the developments that's been in the news for quite a bit was this Biden-era Save program,

and now that that program is ending.

Can you tell us a bit about the program and what it means for, I guess there's what,

seven million borrowers still enrolled in the program?

Yeah.

So the Save Plan was another version of an income-driven repayment plan, of which we've had quite a few of those over the years, and those continue to exist. But it was the Biden administration's attempt to make student loans even more affordable, especially for people who have high debt compared to what

their income is. It was also intended to provide, for some borrowers, a quicker path to forgiveness

after making a certain number of payments under that plan. Unfortunately, one of the many first time this ever happens, that plan was challenged in court

by 13 attorney generals, state attorney generals, and it appeared like the court was leaning

towards siding with those attorney generals, with the plaintiffs, that the administration had gone beyond

the powers that had been afforded to them by Congress to create this plan. And I'm oversimplifying

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