Dazed and delinquent: 1 in 5 borrowers are late on their student loans during a confusing repayment rollout — and the cost of a mistake can be severe

The past few months have seen more twists, like the apparent death of the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan and income-driven repayment (IDR) applications being down for weeks.

While confusion may be understandable, the 43 million people with an outstanding loan need to know there’s a price for any mistakes from here out.

What’s going on?

As of early March, around 9 million borrowers were late on their payments — with almost half being more than 90 days late — according to data obtained by NPR.

Being 90 days delinquent puts you at risk of a severe hit to your credit score. And bad credit means higher borrowing costs, lower borrowing limits and can even make it harder to find a place to live.

In the worst-case scenario, borrowers will be in default if they go at least 270 days without making a payment. At that point, you could have your wages garnished, see federal benefits withheld and even be charged legal fees if you end up in court.

Many student borrowers may not know whether they need to start paying on their loans. For the 8 million who signed up for the SAVE plan before federal courts put the plan on hold, payments aren’t required just yet.

However, those who wanted to sign up for other IDR plans (or update their information) couldn’t do so until now. This led to many borrowers seeing their monthly payments go up significantly while the form was down. In fact, there have been reports of some borrowers’ monthly payments quadrupling.

Unfortunately, there may be more confusion over what is happening. But you do have some control over how you can manage your student loan debt.

How to manage your student loans

Your best bet is to regularly check StudentAid.gov for the latest developments.