With student loan payments set to restart in October, many borrowers are confused about their student loans. 27 percent of borrowers say they do not know how to make payments, according to a survey from NerdWallet. NerdWallet Personal Finance Expert Kimberly Palmer and Bipartisan Policy Center Economic Policy Project Director Rachel Snyderman join Yahoo Finance Live to reveal their top tips for getting ahead of student loan payments as part of the weekly series "Student Loans: Smarter Strategies."

Due to inflation and other pressures, Palmer revealed that "people are basically stressed" even before the payments begin. Palmer said, "It really begins for people with number one, getting a hold on what you owe, logging into studentaid.gov, and just getting a sense of how you will work those payments into your monthly budget."

Snyderman explained, "The cost of attaining a higher education degree has become unaffordable and unattainable, and so we really do need to look at common sense solutions ... a lot of our work is focused for example on strengthening the value of pell grants, ensuring that states are able to adequately fund their higher educations."

Video Transcript

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KIMBERLY PALMER: Suddenly, people have to find a way to start making those payments. And so what we found in our survey is that, people are feeling very financially stressed about that, and even confused, because we've had such a long break. So a lot of people don't even know exactly how much they owe, who their lender is. And so for some people, it starts as answering those basic questions. And I think, it's worth noting too, we're in an environment where we're facing inflation, people are basically stressed anyway, even before these repayments started.

And so it really begins, for people, with, number one, getting a hold on what you owe, logging in to studentaid.gov and just getting a sense of how you will work those payments into your monthly budget, and then looking more closely at that monthly budget. For a lot of people, we're going to have to shift some of our spending habits. For other people, it means looking for ways to earn more income and so they can cover all of these costs because the bottom line is, for so many people, this is a huge shift, and it's causing a lot of stress and strain.

RACHEL SNYDERMAN: And I think that, as we talk about the resumption of student loan payments and these issues of debt forgiveness, what we're talking about, really, is the symptom, and not the disease, and the fact that the cost of attaining a higher education degree has become unaffordable and unattainable. And so we really do need to look at common-sense solutions. And that's where a lot of our work is focused, for example, on, strengthening the value of Pell Grants, ensuring that states are able to adequately fund their higher educations, to really put the focus on accessibility and accountability when it comes to our higher education institutions so that students are leaving-- even if they do need to take out loans to be able to support their education, that they really do feel that they there is a bang for their buck in making such a tremendous investment.

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