Hi EMILY,

Due to COVID-19, your friends here at Federal Student Aid kindly paused your student loan payments and set your interest rate to 0%. But as time went on, we had to ask ourselves who was even benefitting from our selflessness. We couldn’t think of anyone.

As a result, OUR EXTREMELY GENEROUS PAYMENT PAUSE AND SUPER NICE 0% INTEREST PERIOD HAVE BEEN EXTENDED FOR THE LAST TIME.

Naturally, we assume you’re itching to spend hundreds of dollars a month again on a degree you obtained five years ago, but in the unlikely case you don’t want to do this, our checklist can help you prepare:

  • First, remember that you don’t have to do this alone. We’re standing by, ready, willing, and able to help as long as the thing you need help with is one of the following: logging into your account.
  • Make sure your contact information is up to date. We realize you may have moved because you lost your job, were priced out of your neighborhood, or simply had your home destroyed by a climate disaster. Spare us the details. Just tell us your new address.
  • Consider applying for an income-driven repayment plan to make your monthly payments more affordable. This is particularly great for us—sorry, YOU—because it means we get to charge more in interest over time—whoops, no—because your monthly payments will be more manageable.
  • Use our new and improved Loan Simulator to determine how old you’ll be when your debt is finally paid. We’ll even predict what stage of life you’ll be in at that point. Most likely outcomes include A) menopausal, B) grandparent, and C) post-death.
  • If you are overwhelmed by the amount you owe, think of all the college expenses that we didn’t get to charge you interest on. Like all those times you lost your campus ID and had to pay the school $25 for it. Or the time you flushed your dorm key down the toilet and had to pay the school $200 for it. Or the time you got arrested for drinking a warm Rolling Rock with one foot on the sidewalk at 6:30 p.m. on Halloween while dressed as a sexy nun, and you had to pay the school $1,000 for it. You paid for all those things with your own money thanks to that $7-an-hour summer job. Now that’s something to be proud of.
  • Think of all the things you got out of college that you can’t possibly put a price tag on. Maybe you made lifelong friends. Maybe you learned how to do a critical analysis of a Lady Gaga music video in an English literature class. Or maybe you simply acquired a crippling fear of failure. Surely, all of these things infinitely improved your life and the lives of those around you in equal amounts. And remember, they wouldn’t have happened without us! (Be sure to include #I♡FSA and #AmericanDream on social media when talking about how much you love Federal Student Aid, banks, or the ever-widening discrepancies in socioeconomic status made possible by the extreme cost of higher education.)
  • Finally, take a step back from all this and ask yourself whether a generalized degree in “media” from a midwestern state school was worth it in the first place. Maybe you should go to grad school? We’ll help.

Love,
Federal Student Aid