Chris and Carolyn McAuliffe are in their 60s but don’t expect to retire anytime soon. They’re still paying off their student-loan debt, which has ballooned to a half-million dollars.
“I regret going to college,” said Chris, an engineer for a health insurance company.
When they earned their graduate degrees decades ago, the couple owed a combined $114,000 in student loans. With stable careers—Carolyn in nursing—they stayed on top of their monthly payments. Then they bought a house and had two children and money got tight, so they consolidated their loans and opted for a payment plan that lowered their monthly bill.
That extended the life of their loan, and compounding interest charges kept pushing up their balance.
Student loans are increasingly following Americans into their 60s and rewriting what they believed would be their retirement years. More than three million people 62 and older owe federal student loans, up from 1.8 million in 2018, according to Education Department data. Delinquency rates among older borrowers have skyrocketed too, in some cases because they are on fixed incomes or have medical expenses.