If there is one thing that we almost all can agree on its that most of us are haunted by student loans. The student loan debt in the United States is at an all time high! The total outstanding debt nationwide is $1.6 trillion. A new report revealed the student loan default rate for New Jersey alone. According to Patch.com, the default rate on the borrowed money in New Jersey is 9.5 percent. 

Jersey currently ranks 19th out of all the states for the default rate on student loans. The highest being 18.16 percent in Nevada and the lowest being 5.82 percent in Massachusetts.

Now how is all this determined, you may ask? Well the default rate is a result of late payments. A federal student loan is considered to be in default if a payment is late by more than 270 days, or about nine months. For Jersey specifically, 7,963 out of 83,835 student loan borrowers are in default which is very bad. Being in default can lead to serious consequences such as having tax refunds, Social Security benefits or wages garnished as well as vastly lowered credit score, the report notes.

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