Month: June 2023

Categories
Pandemic

Student Loan Pause

One of the last holdouts from the pandemic era is about to end. Student loans were put on hold for more than three years and interest rates were reduced to 0%. As part of the debt ceiling agreement signed by President Joe Biden in June 2023, student loan payments will resume at the end of August. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “student loan interest will resume starting on Sept. 1, 2023, and payments will be due starting in October” (Federal Student Aid). This is separate from President Biden’s student loan forgiveness which is on hold pending a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court later this month.

A brief history of the federal student loan pause during the pandemic era is as follows: On March 13, 2020 President Trump announced that interest would be eliminated on all federal student loans. The following week, the US Department of Education announced student loan interest would be suspended for three months and payments suspended for two months. On March 27, 2020 President Trump signed the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) suspending federal student loans through September 30, 2020.

President Trump extended the payment pause two more times during his last year in office. When President Biden took office in January 2021, he extended the pause several times; the last pause was announced on April 6, 2022 which extended student loan relief measures through August 31 that year (Custer, Bradley D and Azoulay, Ella). Visit here for more details on the student payment pause timeline.

Below is a CNBC segment from 2020 where President Trump announces executive action that pauses interest on all federal student loans until further notice.

When the U.S. Supreme Court took up the student loan forgiveness case, President Biden extended the pause until 60 days after the Court made its decision or June 30, 2023, whichever comes first.

Now that the pause on student loans is ending this summer, it’s time to start thinking about how you will pay them. ABCNews published an article on June 16, 2023 offering some tips:

First, locate your student loan servicer, since the company that manages your student loans may have changed over the past three years. You can find your loan servicer by logging on to studentaid.gov.

Next, make sure your loan servicer has accurate and up-to-date contact information. Repayment start dates will differ depending on who manages your loan, so be sure to ask when payments will resume and how much you’ll owe each month, once they do…

Several federal plans base your payments on your income and family size. Income-driven repayment plans, such as Pay As You Earn and Revised Pay As You Earn, can make your payments more manageable and, in some cases, could push your payment as low as $0 per month. If you can’t keep up with payments, ask your lender about a deferment or forbearance period.

 Christoforous
courtesy of ImgFlip

Social Media Trends as of June 17, 2023

Facebook #studentloanpause: people are posting about this
Instagram #studentloanpause: 204 posts
TikTok #studentloanpause: 3,300,000 views
YouTube #studentloanpause: 100 videos and channels

Google Trends: “student loan pause” first appeared in January 2021 despite executive action pausing interest and payment of student loans in March 2020. There are many different ways of phrasing “student loan pause” but this is the one I used for this blog. The popularity of the phrase spiked in December 2021, April 2022 and peaked in August 2022. There is every reason to believe it will peak this summer as 45 million students will have to make room in their budget for student loan payments.

student loan pause search term

Sources:

Christoforous, Alexis. The student loan challenge: Here’s what to do when payments resume.” ABCNews. June 16, 2023. URL: https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-loan-challenge-payments-resume/story?id=100146106.

CNBC Television. “President Donald Trump waives interest on all student loans due to coronavirus.” YouTube. 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Alu8UcRkiE.

Custer, Bradley D and Azoulay, Ella. “Timeline: Federal Student Loans During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” American Progress.org. Aug 9, 2022. URL: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/timeline-federal-student-loans-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

Federal Student Aid. U.S. Department of Education. 2023. URL: https://studentaid.gov/.

@POTUS. Student loan forgiveness and payment pause. Twitter. Nov 22, 2022. URL: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1595150070285885440.

Student loan meme. ImgFlip. URL: https://www.weareteachers.com/wp-content/uploads/never-repay.jpeg.

Categories
Pandemic

Walktail

Walktail is a combination of “walk” and “cocktail” and it means to go for a walk while drinking a cocktail. It’s not a new word but it became popular during the early days of the pandemic. It appeared in Cambridge Dictionary’s blog as a possible new word for August 2020.

Walktail: a cocktail that you drink while you walk

For those on a budget, the walktail can just as easily be made at home. Kummer also added that it offers an additional outlet for of-age adults to socialize while maintaining a safe distance. “It’s another way of meeting your neighbors, keeping social distance, and having a drink,” he said.

On June 25, 2020 an article entitled “The Best New Words Invented in the COVID-19 Era” was published on the Dandelion Chandelier website and gave the following definition for Walktail:

What was once considered against the law is now the hot new social event. Especially popular amongst suburban moms, it is the act of going for a walk while drinking alcohol from an open container.

Murphy

Most bars were closed during lockdown and indoor and outdoor gatherings were discouraged but some restaurants and bars offered drinks to go for pickup. The canned cocktail became popular during the pandemic since they “they’re easily transportable, naturally portion controlled, require no extra ingredients or bottle opener to enjoy” (Dickinson). The best thing about canned cocktails is they have a longer shelf life. A word of caution though – canned cocktails are illegal in some parts of the United States and they may not be available everywhere.

Mike Seeler, editor for the New York Times, acknowledged that “with both bars and gyms closed, such drinking and walking – or “walktailing” – has been occurring at a seemingly unprecedented rate.” He relates the experience of Pam LeBlanc who found her own unique way of walktailing:

Earlier this month, as the state of Texas was about to ease its stay-at-home restrictions, Pam LeBlanc pulled her wedding dress out of a vacuum-sealed box, put it on for the first time in 21 years, poured herself a glass of prosecco, strapped on some heels, walked out of her house in Austin, and began twirling in the middle of the street.

She’d been doing some version of this for about 40 days, a period during which she and most Americans were unable to hunker down at their favorite watering hole and let a professional bartender pour them a drink.

“I decided that every day we were going to shelter in place, I was going to put on some kind of dress and go out in the street with a cocktail,” said Ms. LeBlanc, 56, an outdoorsy freelance journalist not normally given to swanky garb. “It was my way of flipping off the coronavirus.”

Seeler

During the pandemic some restaurants, such as Grand Rapids Eastern Kille Distillery, offered cocktail kits for pickup so you could enjoy a walktail made with fresh ingredients.

courtesy of playful_comics

Social Media Trends as of June 2, 2023

Surprisingly, walktail does not appear much on social media sites although it does appear in news articles.

Google Trends: walktail predates the pandemic and first appeared in 2005. The popularity of the term peaked

walktail search term

Sources:

13onyourside.com channel. “Eastern Kille offering cocktail kits amid COVID-19 pandemic.” YouTube. April 6, 2020. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xocaCpV9iM8.

Dickinson, Grace. “Here’s where to get canned cocktails at restaurants and bars in Philadelphia.” The Philadelphia Inquirer. May 12, 2021. URL: https://www.inquirer.com/philly-tips/canned-cocktails-philadelphia-20210512.html.

Murphy, Julie. “The Best New Words Invented in the COVID-19 Era.” Dandelion Chandelier. June 25, 2020. URL: https://www.dandelionchandelier.com/2020/06/25/new-words-coronavirus-era/.

“New words – 31 August 2020.” Cambridge.org. 31August 2020. URL: https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2020/08/31/new-words-31-august-2020/.

playful_comic. “Walktail” meme. iFunny.com. 21 Jul 2020. URL: https://ifunny.co/picture/walk-tail-wok-tal-noun-when-you-can-t-go-pDo8Woqp7.

Seeler, Mike. “Slosh! Slurp! Welcome to the ‘Walktail’ Party.” New York Times. May 20, 2020. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/style/cocktails-to-go.html.