What would it cost you to trust the wrong person at the wrong time? Not emotionally — financially. In dollars, in credit score points, in the years it takes to rebuild what someone else’s choices destroyed.
I first heard about Hector Nakamura at a block party in Des Moines last October. A neighbor of his, someone I’d been chatting with near a folding table of potato salad, mentioned him almost in passing — “You should talk to Hector. He’s been going through it, but he’d never say so.” A week later, Hector agreed to sit down with me at a diner near his apartment on the city’s east side. He showed up in his work uniform, straight from a job, and ordered coffee he barely touched.
Hector Nakamura is 35 years old. He works as a pest control technician, earns roughly $38,400 a year, and is the primary caregiver for his mother, who moved in with him in early 2024 after a fall that left her with limited mobility. He has no partner sharing the financial load. And he is carrying two separate debt burdens that have, in his words, “turned every month into a math problem I can’t solve.”
A Graduate Degree and the Debt That Came With It
Hector’s first debt problem is one he chose knowingly. After finishing a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, he enrolled in a graduate program at a mid-size Iowa university in 2016, believing a master’s credential would open doors in land management or environmental consulting. It did not open those doors — at least not for him.
“The program was good. I don’t regret learning what I learned,” he told me. “What I regret is not understanding what $52,000 in loans at 6.5 percent actually meant for my life afterward.”
He enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan shortly after graduating, which capped his monthly federal loan payments based on his discretionary income. For a time, that made the debt manageable — his payments hovered around $190 a month. But when his mother moved in and his expenses climbed, even that felt crushing alongside rent, utilities, groceries, and his mother’s prescription costs.
According to the Federal Student Aid office, income-driven repayment plans can result in loan forgiveness after 20 to 25 years of qualifying payments — but Hector told me he’s not counting on a number that far away. “Twenty years from now I’ll be 55,” he said. “I needed something that helped me now.”
The Cosigned Loan Nobody Warned Him About
The second debt is the one that blindsided him. In 2019, Hector cosigned a private student loan for a close friend who was returning to school for a nursing certification. The loan was $22,000 through a private lender. The friend made payments for about 18 months, then stopped — first without explanation, then without contact.
When the loan went into default in mid-2021, Hector became fully liable. The original $22,000 had grown with fees and penalty interest to approximately $26,400 by the time collections contacted him. His credit score, which he described as “decent — not great, but decent,” dropped by roughly 90 points in a matter of weeks. That drop affected his ability to refinance his car loan and, later, his rental application when he needed a larger apartment for his mother.
The Month Everything Came Due at Once
Hector described January 2025 as the month he came closest to giving up on the idea that he could manage any of it. His mother needed a specialist appointment not fully covered by Medicaid — a $340 out-of-pocket cost. The collections agency on the cosigned loan sent a formal demand letter threatening wage garnishment. His car needed $780 in brake repairs, because without the car, there was no job.
“I sat at my kitchen table at like two in the morning and I just listed everything out. What came in, what had to go out, what would happen if I didn’t pay each thing,” he told me. “It was the first time I actually cried about money. I’m not someone who does that.”
He did not go to a financial counselor right away. He told me he wasn’t sure which kind of help was real and which was a scam — a concern that turned out to be well-founded. He received two calls in February 2025 from companies offering to “eliminate” his student loan debt for an upfront fee. He hung up on both.
What he eventually did was call his federal loan servicer directly and ask to have his income-driven repayment recalculated based on his new household expenses. According to Federal Student Aid’s SAVE plan guidelines, borrowers can recertify their income annually, and in some cases request an off-cycle recalculation if their financial situation changes significantly. Hector’s monthly federal loan payment dropped from $190 to $112 after recertification — a modest but real relief.
What Changed, and What Didn’t
The cosigned loan situation moved more slowly. Hector eventually connected with a nonprofit credit counseling agency in Des Moines — one affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling — that helped him negotiate a settlement offer on the defaulted private loan. As of our conversation in March 2026, he had agreed to a lump-sum settlement of $14,800, paid in three installments, to resolve the $26,400 balance. The first installment of $5,000 wiped out his small emergency savings.
“Settling felt like losing,” Hector told me, and he didn’t dress it up. “I know it was the right call. The counselor explained it clearly. But I cosigned that loan because I trusted someone, and now I’m paying for it out of money I don’t have.” He paused, then added: “And the person who defaulted has a nursing job now. I looked them up.”
He’s not legally pursuing the original borrower, though he confirmed a counselor told him that would be an option in civil court. He said the cost of that process — emotionally and financially — wasn’t worth it to him right now.
The Quiet Weight of Caregiving on a Fixed Budget
What makes Hector’s story harder to untangle is that the debt crisis doesn’t exist in isolation. He is also his mother’s primary caregiver, which shapes every financial decision he makes. His mother qualifies for Iowa Medicaid, which covers most of her medical costs — a fact Hector said he didn’t know to apply for until a coworker mentioned it. The application process took about six weeks, and coverage began in April 2024.
“Getting her on Medicaid was the one thing that actually worked the way it was supposed to,” he told me. According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, Medicaid eligibility for elderly individuals in Iowa is based on both income and asset limits, and Hector’s mother qualified based on her Social Security income of $1,140 per month.
But even with Medicaid covering her primary care and most specialist visits, there are gaps — copays, transportation costs to appointments, over-the-counter medications that aren’t covered. Hector estimates he spends between $200 and $280 per month out of pocket on his mother’s care beyond what Medicaid handles. That’s money that doesn’t go toward debt.
He’s applied for SNAP benefits twice. The first application, filed in spring 2024, was denied because the caseworker initially calculated his income without accounting for his mother’s household expenses, placing him just above the eligibility threshold. He filed a second application in fall 2024 with documentation of his caregiving costs. That application is still pending as of our conversation — a wait of more than five months.
According to USDA’s SNAP eligibility guidelines, households may deduct certain dependent care costs from their gross income when calculating net income for benefit purposes. Hector said no one told him that during his first application.
Where Things Stand, and What He Wishes He’d Known
When I asked Hector what he would tell someone considering cosigning a loan, he didn’t hesitate. “Don’t,” he said. “Or if you do, understand that you are that loan. You are legally that debt. It is not a favor — it’s a promise that the other person might not keep.”
He’s not bitter in the way I might have expected. He’s tired in a specific, structural way — the tiredness of someone who has spent years solving problems created by other people’s decisions, his own included. The graduate degree. The cosigned loan. The career path that didn’t unfold as planned. He carries all of it without much visible drama, which is perhaps why his neighbor had to point him out to me across a block party rather than him seeking his own spotlight.
The two remaining installments on the cosigned loan settlement — $4,900 in May 2026 and $4,900 in September 2026 — are what he’s focused on now. He’s picked up weekend work through a landscaping contact he knows, pulling in an extra $300 to $400 a month when weather allows. It’s not enough to rebuild savings at the same time, but it’s enough to keep the settlement on track.
As I left the diner that afternoon, Hector walked out ahead of me and stood for a moment squinting into the March cold before heading to his car. He had another job that afternoon — a commercial account, he said, a restaurant near downtown. He didn’t look like someone in crisis. He looked like someone who’d gotten very good at not looking like someone in crisis.
That, perhaps more than any specific dollar figure, is the part of his story that stayed with me.
Related: 6 Federal Relief Programs Still Paying Out in 2026 That Many Americans Are Missing
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