By late March 2026, the window to re-enroll in income-driven repayment plans through Federal Student Aid had become a moving target for millions of borrowers — courts were still untangling various Biden-era repayment provisions, and servicers were sending contradictory notices, according to studentaid.gov. It was this exact confusion that led me to Marcus Dillard’s kitchen table in Atlanta’s East Point neighborhood on a gray Tuesday afternoon.
Marcus, 34, teaches ninth-grade math at a public high school in Fulton County. He has a master’s degree in education from a Georgia state university, two kids under the age of five, a wife who recently cut her work hours after their second child was born, and approximately $62,000 in federal student loan debt that he has been quietly avoiding thinking about for longer than he wants to admit.
A Degree That Was Supposed to Change Everything
Marcus grew up in a household where financial conversations simply did not happen. His parents paid their bills, he said, but no one ever explained how. When he enrolled in a master’s program at 27, he filled out the FAFSA and signed loan paperwork the same way he described signing most things at that age — quickly, and with more optimism than information.
“I thought getting my master’s was just what you did if you wanted to move up,” Marcus told me, leaning back in his chair. “I didn’t sit down and calculate what the monthly payment would be when I graduated. I just thought, more education equals more money, and I’d figure it out.”
He finished the degree in 2019. The salary bump was real but modest — roughly $4,000 more per year in his district. His loan payments, on a standard 10-year federal repayment plan, came out to approximately $640 a month. At the time, a manageable discomfort. Then his daughter was born in 2021, and his son in 2023.
When the Numbers Stopped Making Sense
When I asked Marcus to walk me through a typical month, he paused for a long moment. Childcare for two children runs the family over $1,400 a month. His wife, Keisha, had been working full-time in healthcare administration, but after their son was born, she reduced her hours significantly — a choice the family made together and one Marcus does not second-guess. But it compressed their margin to nearly nothing.
“There were months I wasn’t even opening the credit card statements,” he told me. “I knew what was in there and I just couldn’t deal with it on top of everything else. That’s not a good strategy. I know that. But when you’re exhausted and you’ve got a baby who’s not sleeping, you just put it to the side.”
This is the financial behavior that researchers sometimes call avoidance — common among people who grew up in households where money stress was managed by not discussing it. Marcus recognized it in himself, even as he was doing it.
As Marcus explained, the distinction matters more than he realized. According to Federal Student Aid, Direct Subsidized Loans do not accrue interest while the borrower is enrolled at least half-time or during deferment — a protection that does not apply to Unsubsidized Loans, which begin accruing interest immediately upon disbursement. For a graduate student like Marcus, whose master’s-level borrowing was primarily through Unsubsidized loans, interest had been building from day one.
Discovering Income-Driven Repayment — Late, but Not Too Late
The turning point, Marcus told me, came from a colleague at his school — another teacher who mentioned she had switched to an income-driven repayment plan and cut her monthly payment by more than half. Marcus had heard the phrase before but never looked into it. That conversation sent him to the U, according to ed.gov.S. Department of Education’s loan management portal, where he spent a Sunday afternoon reading for the first time with any real intention.
What he found was both a relief and a frustration. Income-driven repayment plans — which calculate monthly payments based on a percentage of discretionary income rather than the total loan balance — could significantly reduce his monthly obligation. Given his household’s current income level, he estimated his payment could drop to somewhere between $200 and $300 per month under certain plans.
The PSLF angle was significant. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, administered through Federal Student Aid, allows borrowers working full-time for qualifying government or nonprofit employers — including public schools — to have their remaining federal loan balance forgiven after 120 qualifying monthly payments under an eligible repayment plan. Marcus had been a full-time public school teacher for six years. He had been making payments, albeit inconsistently, for most of that time. Some of those payments may have counted. Some almost certainly did not, because he had been on a standard plan rather than an income-driven one.
“That’s the part that gets me,” he said, rubbing his face. “If somebody had told me to certify my employment every year, if I had just known the steps, I might already be partway there. Instead I was just paying blindly.”
Where Things Stand Now — and What Remains Uncertain
When I spoke with Marcus in late March 2026, he had submitted a request to switch to an income-driven repayment plan and was waiting on confirmation from his servicer. He had also submitted an Employment Certification Form to begin formally tracking his PSLF-qualifying payments going forward. Whether his prior payments would be retroactively counted depended on factors still being reviewed — including ongoing litigation around certain repayment plan structures that had been challenged in federal court.
The outcome was not clean. The monthly payment relief he expected was real and measurable — potentially freeing up $400 or more per month for the family. But the PSLF path, if it works, would mean another approximately nine years of payments before any forgiveness. Marcus is 34. He would be in his mid-forties before the balance disappears, assuming no disruptions to the program.
There is something quietly striking about a math teacher who spent years avoiding his own financial statements. Marcus knows this. He talks about it the way people talk about the habits they inherited without realizing it — with honesty and a certain tiredness. His parents never talked about debt. His graduate program never offered a financial literacy orientation. His school district did not flag PSLF when he was hired.
The systems exist. The forgiveness pathway is real. But as Marcus’s experience makes clear, knowing that a program exists and actually navigating it correctly are two entirely different things — and the gap between them has cost him years of qualifying payments he may never recover.
When I left Marcus’s kitchen that afternoon, he was back at his laptop, navigating his servicer’s portal with his older daughter pulling at his sleeve. He had a browser tab open to the Federal Student Aid website and another to his school district’s HR page, looking for the contact he needed to request an employer certification letter. Small steps. Long road.
“I feel better knowing there’s a plan,” he told me as I packed up my recorder. “I just hate that it took me this long to make one.”
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