After being suspended for more than two years, the pause on student loan payments will be ending soon. Borrowers have less than a month to prepare as May 1 is just around the corner.

The payments were supposed to start in February but got pushed back several months. The pause was put in place because of the Care Act of 2020.

A survey found that 89 percent of borrowers are not prepared to begin making payments again. Here in Tennessee, borrowers racked up more than $30.8 billion in student loan debt and the average owed per person is around 36-thousand dollars.

To find out what you owe, visit this website from the U.S. Department of Education. There you’ll see all the details about how much you owe and will be able to change monthly payments.

If you can’t afford what you had previously set, there are free programs to help you modify it. Experts are there to help and understand the difficulties.

“There are going to be those of us that stumble. But the intention of the care act was for the positive,” said Managing Partner at Yrefy Mary Jo Lambert-Terry. “Trying to take people in the right direction and help them during serious times when retail and restaurants were closed and people that had thriving jobs no longer had them. Hopefully, they’ve come back.”

Experts said there’s always the possibility the suspension could be extended, but it’s always best to get a head start preparing if you can.