How 10 student-loan borrowers are coping with the highs and lows of Biden's debt relief announcement

Jamie Horak and Aidan Smith — two student-loan borrowers — were rejoicing just days after Biden made his debt relief announcement.

Prior to the relief, Horak had about $20,000 in student debt and worried about paying down their mortgage when payments resume. But as a Pell Grant recipient, when Horak learned they would get their entire student debt balance wiped out, they were ecstatic.

"When I saw the whole amount, the entire balance, I was elated, relieved, and I felt like, wow, it's kind of the first time I've ever felt directly impacted by something like a political order or passing of something," Horak said.

Smith — another Pell Grant recipient — learned his entire $7,000 remaining balance would be forgiven as well, and not only was he excited for himself, but for millions of others whose lives "are going to transform."

Read the full story here.

For Nick Garcia, 42, Biden's student-debt relief was bittersweet.

While $10,000 in debt cancellation would certainly make a dent in his $39,000 balance, the college professor recognized that he was still looking ahead at years of repayment and was disappointment Biden didn't seize the opportunity to go even bigger with the relief.

"I feel disheartened because it shows that more can be done at the executive level," Garcia said. "Although I'm glad to see action from Biden that will improve the lives of millions, I don't know that it rises to the moment. It just doesn't resolve our debt crisis."

The student-loan payment pause, on the other hand, was instrumental for Garcia and his family, as it allowed them to save hundreds of dollars a month they put toward house repairs and paying down personal debts.

Still, with Biden framing this loan forgiveness as "one-time" relief, Garcia is concerned that "it sends a message that the fight is over."

Read the full story here.

After two courts decided Biden's student-debt relief plan would be put on pause, Guilherme Lopes, a 31-year-old first generation student, felt defeated.

As a nonprofit worker on a five-figure salary, Lopes was looking forward to $10,000 in relief to help him progress on his repayment quicker and help his family out financially — especially because he said that after immigrating from Brazil to the US, he did not have the knowledge he needed to navigate the financial student-aid system, which is partly why his debt surged.

But the lawsuits that blocked the relief didn't reflect "the American dream that we were promised coming over," Lopes said.

"It's more of the unknown, the uncertainty, it just feels like a really sick game," he continued. "Are we going to get a pause? Are our payments coming back? It's just all unnerving."

Lopes said he has faith the debt relief will ultimately prevail, but he's upset millions of Americans have been put in this position.

Read the full story here.

Matthew, a 28-year-old Republican, would see his entire student-debt balance wiped out under Biden's plan. That doesn't mean he agrees with the policy.

Since Biden announced the loan forgiveness, Matthew said he was skeptical it would ever come to fruition, and he wasn't surprised once the lawsuits started to mount.

"My generation, the millennial, Gen Z generation, are facing a significant problem with student-loan debt," he said. "I feel as though that the administration, through their strongest intent and their sincerest desires, were trying to help that generation with this policy. However, I personally believe it's the wrong policy and was, quite frankly, an illegal policy."

He, along with other conservative lawmakers, share the belief that canceling student debt is unfair to high earners and people who researched how their educations would pay off, and he said he's worried for the people who were banking on forgiveness and already spent the money as the relief remains held up in court.

Read the full story here.

Timothy Babulski, a 44-year-old adjunct professor, knows $10,000 in relief would hardly make a difference to his $230,000 balance.

But he hopes millions of other federal borrowers can experience some relief before they are thrown back into repayment.

Through recently announced reforms to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, Babulski is hoping to get more payments counted toward his forgiveness progress once they are implemented. But his concern right now is that if Biden's debt relief ultimately gets struck down, the White House won't pursue any alternative routes to get promised relief to millions.

"My fear, regardless of the outcome of the case, is that the White House is so desperate to restart payments and get back to normal that they've forgotten that 'normal' is a decades-long debt sentence; either way, it will be an excuse to say they'd done all the can," he said. "The only difference will be whether the majority of borrowers will be abandoned— or all of us will be."

Read the full story here.