Kayla Camacho was halfway through her master’s degree when federal student loan payments were paused in March 2020.
When she graduated last year, Camacho put the money she would have spent paying off her $68,000 debt toward savings and her younger siblings, buying flights back home to Orange County, California, for one sister and dance shoes for another. The first in her family to graduate from college, Camacho became the family’s safety net.
But the pandemic relief was always meant to be temporary. Camacho and tens of millions of other borrowers have braced for months as the pause’s expiration date approached, only to be postponed multiple times — it is now set for Aug. 31.
