The Department of Education published a notice on August 25 re-establishing a data-sharing arrangement with the Social Security Administration that flags federal student loan borrowers the SSA has already determined are disabled. Borrowers won’t have to track down a doctor’s certification or mail in a paper application to start the process — the match is…

Federal student loan borrowers who still write a check or log in every month to pay their bill are missing out on a discount that their auto-pay peers are already banking. The U.S. Department of Education says that gap closes for good on September 30, when the deadline passes for new enrollees to lock in…

Millions of federal student loan borrowers have watched a monthly payment go out and their balance somehow tick up anyway, a result of interest accruing faster than income-based payments could cover it. The Education Department’s new repayment system is built specifically to stop that from happening. Under the plan the department finalized this year, a…

Charged-off credit card debt is sticking around on borrowers’ credit reports far longer than it used to, new Federal Reserve research shows. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that lenders have become far more persistent about keeping those charged-off balances visible on credit reports long after the debt itself has…

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s newest household debt report tells two stories about the same set of borrowers, and only one of them is reassuring. Total household debt fell by $13 billion in the second quarter of 2026, a 0.1 percent dip to $18.8 trillion, according to the New York Fed’s Center for…

The U.S. Department of Education is offering federal student loan borrowers a real discount for doing something most servicers have offered for years: paying automatically. Borrowers who enroll in auto pay by September 30, 2026, or who are already enrolled, get their interest rate cut by a full percentage point starting July 1, 2026, quadrupling…

For anyone with a thin or damaged credit history, one of the most reliable tools to rebuild is also one of the most misunderstood: the secured credit card. It works like a regular card but is backed by a refundable deposit the cardholder puts down. Used carefully, it reports positive payment history to the credit…

The math on carrying a credit card balance has quietly turned brutal. The average interest rate on cards that carry a balance now sits around 22%, and Americans are falling behind at the fastest pace in fifteen years. Together those two facts describe a squeeze that is hitting fixed-income households especially hard, and they also…

The “pay in four” installment plans that have become a checkout staple are no longer invisible to the credit system. Buy-now-pay-later loans are now being folded into credit reports and scores, which means paying them on time can help build credit for people with thin files — and missing a payment can now ding a…

Collections on defaulted federal student loans have restarted after a long pause, and the consequences reach straight into a household’s cash flow. The government can seize tax refunds, garnish wages, and even take a slice of a Social Security check to recover a defaulted loan. For borrowers who fell behind during the years of paused…