Here's what you should know about the resumption of student loan payments

After a long-extended three-year pause, student loan payments for millions of Americans resume this month, which can provide varying levels of anxiety for those with debt still left to pay.

Here's a look at the resumption of student loans, what it all means, and tactics for paying off the debt. :

Why were student loan payments paused?

As part of the emergency measures taken by the federal government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all student loan payments were paused and all interest was eliminated for the time. On eight occasions over the past three years, those emergency measures were extended, even after other pandemic-related measures were lifted.

The resumption comes about as the result of the debt ceiling deal reached by Congress and the Biden administration back in June, with the Biden administration bending in some ways on the student loan issue in order to get the votes needed to pass the appropriations bill.

Richard Funderburg, an associate professor of public management and policy at the University of Illinois Springfield, said that the student loan pause was always meant to be temporary, an acknowledgment of the burden being placed on people having to stay at home and away from their jobs because of the pandemic.

"Knowing that people's incomes would be interrupted, we enacted a variety of policies – not just this one, but a variety of policies – to help people weather the storm," Funderburg said. "A natural policy during that period is to defer payment on student loans."

More from USA Today: The pause is over. As student loan payments resume, how to make sure you're prepared

Over three years after the pause began, the negotiations over the debt ceiling bore the fruit of continued student loan payments, beginning in October. But the Biden administration attempted to defray the costs for a wide range of people through executive order.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines to end the program, saying the executive branch overreached in trying to cancel student loans via fiat.

Are people in a better position to pay off their student loans after the pause?

Depends on who you ask. Funderburg said that the federal economy is in an interesting state despite hikes in interest rates to try and tamp down inflation.

"In aggregate, if you look at the economy as a whole, it looks like everyone's doing quite well, that they should be able to repay their debts," Funderburg said. "On a case-by-case basis, of course, you'll find instances where individuals are still struggling."

Alex Abbeduto attended the University of Iowa on a five-year plan, graduating in 2020 as the student loan pause began. She admits that the pause was a good thing for her, coming at a time when she needed to find a job and not worry about extra expenses.

"Just being able to focus on rent and starting to save up for whatever the future had took some stress off of me," Abbeduto said. "I didn't even have to think about my loans during that time period, I just got to focus on job searching."

Now a Public Affairs Reporting student at UIS, she's never considered herself in a particularly good position to pay off her $33,586 in loans. .

"I didn't have enough money to go off and live my life," Abbeduto said. "The job I did get was in the north Chicago suburbs, so it was an hour-and-a-half commute, making $16 an hour. When you add in how much I was spending to get to work every day and the groceries that I was helping pay for at home, a good chunk of my paycheck was gone by that point.

If I had to be paying $300-400 a month for my loans, I wouldn't have been able to save up enough money to now be able to afford the tuition payments for graduate school."

How do income-based repayment plans to cut loan debt work?

Abbeduto is among many people who opted to take advantage of the SAVE repayment plan, which – according to the U.S. Department of Education – calculates the monthly amount for those who opt in based on how much money they earn and family size.

It also eliminates all interest for subsidized and unsubsidized loans after a scheduled payment is made.

The new SAVE plan is an updated version of REPAYE (Revised Pay-as-you-Earn), the existing form of income-based repayment for borrowers. Abbeduto said that without opting into the SAVE plan, she may not have had enough money to pay the tuition needed to attend UIS.

"Because I'm making under a certain amount of money, my minimum payments are now zero dollars," Abbeduto said. "Even though I'm making my minimum payment each month, I'm not accruing interest on my loans. My balance will stay at $33,586, which means I don't have to worry about not being able to afford a loan payment or making a loan payment without actually taking anything off the principal (amount). I can wait until I'll be in a better position to start cutting down the principal instead of having to waste time paying off the accrued interest."

How can I ease my debt, with or without income-based loan repayment?

Funderburg says that people needing to repay loans – particularly those who are unable to get relief from the federal government – should begin by trying to develop a budget. The first step, he said, is to record spending for one month before figuring out what the priorities are alongside loan repayment.

He said that while developing a budget can be intimidating, there are plenty of places to get help, such as places of worship, where people can connect with accountants who are members of a church, synagogue, or mosque.

"I generally will advise people to check with a director of ministry at their church, synagogue, mosque or wherever to check and see if there's someone that can point to those kinds of resources," Funderburg said.

If possible, Funderburg also recommends that people consolidate their debt in as few accounts as possible, or to convert the debt into a personal loan with a lower interest rate and borrow the money against something of value, such as a car. Funderburg did something similar when he needed to pay for his doctoral work at the University of California, Irvine.

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"In a way, I sold a used car to myself, put the car up as collateral on a personal loan and it let me beat all of the interest rates on credit cards," Funderburg said. "I put all of my debt into that one bucket."

Funderburg said that this is borrowed largely from the work of personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, who suggests that people take a sort of "debt snowball" approach that works when people make their monthly minimum payments and put the debt into the account with the lowest balance.

"Your goal is to reduce the spread of repayments so you're just focusing on that one big pot that you have to go after," Funderburg said. "As you retire these other accounts, you take what you were paying off in that other account to the remaining account."

Funderburg said when it comes to debt, "you need to attack it very strategically."

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: What you need to know about student loan payments resuming