forbearance

The Russian president keeps pushing his luck, and the U.S. president keeps showing him uncharacteristic forbearance.

The payment pause, known as forbearance, artificially inflated borrowers’ credit scores by reporting $0 payments as current.

He spent 15 years in and out of forbearance, deferment and repayment on his federal loans.

It’s the reason so many student-loan borrowers find themselves trapped in cycles of deferment, forbearance or minimum payments that allow balances to balloon rather than shrink.

It also gives borrowers the flexibility to repay the relief by banning lump sum repayment after the forbearance period ends, as long as a borrower was current on payments when it started.