If you are having difficulties at this time to pay for your student loans, you have the option to postpone payments so that you can have some breathing room at the moment. There’s three ways that this can happen.

Grace period: this comes automatically with Federal student loans, wherein the lender will not ask you to repay the loans immediately after graduating from college or finishing school. The lender will give you a break and allow you to establish your finances before they start asking you to pay for the student loans.

Deferment: this is possible as long as the borrower meets certain circumstances such as financial hardship or unemployment. This is only granted for loans that are not on default. Also, no interest will be charged on subsidized loans.

Forbearance: this is available for loans that are current or on default. However, interest will continue to accrue if the account remains in forbearance.

Usually, borrowers who postpone their payments would most likely be more unable to repay their student loans. If you postpone the payment because of hardship, know that the loans will accrue the interest and that would make the loans bigger than the amount when you stopped paying for it. So borrowers should be very careful in considering to put their loans on temporary postponement.