130K Missourians default on student loans, 1 week left for ‘Fresh Start’ [Video]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The deadline for a program that could help millions of people across the country is coming up in exactly one week.

The Fresh Start program has been around for about two years, but it’s set to end Sept. 30.

Fresh Start is for anyone who has defaulted on a federal student loan. In Missouri, that means 130,000 people.

It’s automatically been protecting borrowers from creditors and wage garnishment, but unless they manually enroll within a week, those protections go away.

Fresh Start was born during the pandemic when the U.S. Department of Education wanted to give borrowers more breathing room during a financially untenable time.

So, if you didn’t pay your student loans for a year, you weren’t being reported as “in default,” which meant it didn’t tank your credit score. You also would not be disqualified from other loans and wages were not garnished.

Before …