After raising her kids, KeliAnne Piscopo wanted a stable career and a steady income. She thought going to school in her 40s was the solution.
So in 2014, she took out nearly $54,000 in student loans from the online school Post University to get her bachelor’s degree in human services. After graduating, she helped run a public school program helping refugees adjust to life in the US.
Funding cuts under President Donald Trump ended the program, and her work has since disappeared.
Now 59, Piscopo works 70 hours a week at three different jobs, earning an average of $20 an hour. After her 9-to-5 as an assistant insurance broker, she spends Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights as a caregiver in 95-year-old woman’s home. Between caregiving shifts, she works at a doctor’s office on Saturday during the day.
She says the workload barely covers her bills. And now she’s getting a new one. Covering her new bill of $95 per month would mean working another day each month — time she says she doesn’t have.
“With everything else I have to try to figure out how to manage, I don’t need one more thing,” Piscopo, 59, said.
Millions of other federal student-loan borrowers are in similar situations. On July 1, Trump’s sweeping repayment overhaul took effect, and some borrowers are facing monthly bills that are hundreds of dollars higher. The administration has said that its goal is to simplify a complex repayment system and prompt colleges to lower their tuitions. Still, borrowers are confronting a critical dilemma: find the extra money, or fall behind and risk the consequences of default, such as wage garnishment.
And it’s not just tighter monthly budgets. Business Insider heard from nearly 1,000 borrowers over the past year who said they’re pulling back on retirement savings, holding off on having children, postponing homeownership, and taking on extra jobs to cover their student-loan payments.
“What are we going to do when we retire?” Piscopo said. “Being this particular age with student loans is really daunting.”
Student debt and the threat of default
Cassandra Kormendy is also grappling with the elimination of her affordable repayment plan. The 39-year-old single mother of three was making payments of around $530 on SAVE, and she anticipates a surge to $1,200. Working as a telehealth mental health therapist, she doesn’t see how she’ll be able to afford her payments without increasing her workload. Still, she said she’ll do what she can to avoid defaulting.
“I’m scared of the repercussions, so I’m going to try to make that payment, maybe by increasing my hours, which also takes away from spending time with my kids,” Kormendy said. “So I don’t know the answer.”
Christine LaRocco, 66, doesn’t know if retirement is a possibility.
She makes about $62,000 a year working in account sales in Illinois, and said she’s depleted her retirement savings and maxed out her credit cards to pay for home repairs. LaRocco said she voted for Trump and felt financially better off during his first term. But as she prepares for higher monthly payments on her $39,481 student-loan balance, she thinks the administration “is kind of blind to student loans right now.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I have to make that first payment,” LaRocco said. “I just don’t know where to turn to.”
When former President Joe Biden’s SAVE plan became available in 2023, with lower bills and a shorter timeline to debt relief, LaRocco had monthly payments of $143. The Trump administration eliminated SAVE in March. Now LaRocco and the 7 million other borrowers enrolled in SAVE have to transition to a new repayment plan. LaRocco doesn’t know what her new payment will be, and said she’s “very afraid” that a higher one will push her into default.
The Department of Education paused involuntary collections on defaulted student loans in January and hasn’t specified when the pause will lift. When it does, borrowers will again be subject to wage garnishment and the seizure of federal benefits, like Social Security. About 9 million borrowers are in default, according to the latest Federal Student Aid data, and about 3.5 million borrowers are delinquent. Of those borrowers, 1.4 million are in late-stage delinquency and are at risk of defaulting in the next 6 months.
“That’s the one subject I don’t agree with Trump on, is the way he’s handling student loans,” LaRocco said.
Navigating an uncertain future
The Trump administration has said its student-loan repayment overhaul is intended to simplify a complex system and ensure borrowers don’t graduate with unaffordable debt.
“Collectively, our changes will ensure students continue to have the access that they need for federal student loans, while helping prevent borrowers from taking on unmanageable debt levels that they may never be able to repay,” Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a statement.
Jodi Sprague, 54, expects her payments to surge on the administration’s new Repayment Assistance Plan, which became available July 1. The middle school teacher had been paying around $404 a month on an income-driven repayment plan, and her projected payment on RAP is $1,100.
“I went into full panic mode,” Sprague said. In addition to her $144,136 student-loan balance from her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kennesaw State University and the University of West Georgia, respectively, she has nearly $19,000 in parent PLUS loans that she took out to help pay for her daughter’s education. As Sprague’s second daughter prepares for college, she said she told both of her kids they’ll have to chip in more for their education.
“We canceled Netflix. Just every little thing that we can think of, we’re cutting back,” Sprague said. “It’s one of those things where we’re just going to have to take it month by month to see how we’re going to do this.”
As a single mom, Shannon Brady is feeling the weight of higher monthly payments. Brady, 43, works as a social worker and holds a $300,626 student-loan balance from her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. While she’s hopeful that she’ll receive Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years, she’s not sure whether she’ll be able to manage a payment increase from $0 under SAVE to the anticipated $800.
“I would be homeless,” Brady said. “I wouldn’t be able to provide my rent, my utilities, my gas to work, and all this stuff that I have to pay to live, and pay an $800 student loan payment. There’s no way in my life that I can pay that.”
Have a story to share about student loans? Contact this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.
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