LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — October is a month that many in Central Arkansas have been looking at— but not for reasons they may like.
"It's like, even if I want to pay it back, it's confusing," Kyle Morgan explained.
Morgan, like many, is a recent college graduate, with loans on pause thanks to pandemic measures. We spoke to him and others in Little Rock's River Market on Tuesday and asked them one simple question— "Tell me about your student loans?"
"10 thousand or so," Morgan said.
"It's down to around 19 thousand or so," Crystal McMurtry, another loan borrower, said.
"Around 65 thousand dollars," another person told us.
All three are on different levels of student loan debt with different levels of repayment. Morgan is the earliest in that journey, having just graduated in May.
"I haven't had to pay anything yet," he said. "I don't have experience in it yet, and it's all just kind of gonna, like, come to a head."
Others, like McMurtry, have been paying their loans for quite some time, but that doesn't mean she still hasn't been looking toward October.
"I don't know what we're going to do in the, you know, next few months or whatever," she said. "We still plan on trying to just pay chunks of it at a time."
That was a common theme for those we spoke with on Tuesday— a starting plan, but still wanting to know more.
That's where Jonathan Coleman comes in.
"Really hope they've been preparing, I hope they didn't start preparing just now," Coleman, Director of Financial Aid at UALR, said. "I really hope they've been preparing for the last three and a half years."
Coleman works with current students, mainly, but his advice is applicable to all those with student loan debt.
"Standard loan repayment is 10 to 30 years," he said. "There could be people that have borrowed, you know when I was five years old, that are still paying it back."
So what does he recommend? The first step, he says, is to call your loan provider. He says that could lead to consolidation of your loans, or even lowering your payment amounts.
He also explained that it's important to budget for this now.
"Another six weeks, two months to put a little bit of money back to prepare for that first payment in October," he added.
It's information people like Morgan need to know, and some that could potentially help you as well.
"I just feel like I'm left in the dark on a lot of stuff," he said. "But they say, 'pay 'em back,' you know? Guess I don't got much choice."