After years of working factory jobs, Mary Glod went to college in 1983, hoping that a degree would give her and her two children a better life.
Now 73, Glod still has $31,000 in student debt, and her Social Security checks are just about the only income keeping her afloat in retirement. She hasn’t been paying due to pandemic relief, and her projected student-loan payment of nearly $300 a month isn’t feasible, she said.
“When you’re only getting a thousand dollars a month, and you’ve got rent and you’ve got utilities, I just can’t pay that much,” Glod told Business Insider. “So it’ll probably go into default.”
Glod was free of the consequences of defaulting on her student loans for the past five years under a pandemic moratorium on collections. On May 5, however, Trump’s Department of Education announced that collections on defaulted student loans are resuming, including the eventual garnishment of wages and federal benefits like Social Security.
Most federal student loans enter default after 270 days of missed payments.
Business Insider heard from over a dozen student-loan borrowers in retirement whose Social Security is their main source of income. While some of them are not in default, they’re concerned that they’re headed in that direction and don’t know how to avoid garnishment of their federal benefits. Some also said they support Trump’s motivation to restart collections and ensure loans are paid back.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s education secretary, wrote in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal that restarting collections is necessary to restore accountability to the student-loan system.
“Borrowers who don’t make payments on time will see their credit scores go down, and in some cases their wages automatically garnished,” McMahon wrote. “Why? Not because we want to be unkind to student borrowers. Borrowing money and failing to pay it back isn’t a victimless offense. Debt doesn’t go away; it gets transferred to others.”
Glod said she feels “guilty” that she’s been unable to make debt payments, and if she could afford to, she would.
“I’ve always tried to pay bills that I owe and try to be responsible, but sometimes things happen and you just can’t. It is just beyond your reach,” Glod said. “I don’t know how much they’re going to take out my Social Security, and I can’t stop them. So as long as I can keep the roof over my head and keep the lights on, I guess I’ll just have to deal with it.”
‘I’d like to write a letter to my president that I helped put in office’
The Treasury Department can withhold up to 15% of a student-loan borrower’s Social Security check, up to 15% of their federal salary, and up to 100% of a federal tax refund.
The Department of Education said it sent notices to 195,000 borrowers in default on May 5 that they have 30 days until their federal benefits might be seized. Later this summer, over 5 million defaulted borrowers could see their wages garnished. Borrowers in default have three options to avoid wage and benefits garnishment, but they take time and might require legal representation.
Cheri, 67, described herself as a staunch Republican who voted for Trump. She’s a retiree with nearly $20,000 in student debt and relies on her $1,700 monthly Social Security checks and inconsistent pay from a freelance job. She’s not pleased with the collections restart.
“For them to come right out and say, ‘Well, we’re putting people in collections,’ that really angers me,” Cheri said. “Actually, I’d like to write a letter to my president that I helped put in office and say, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, buddy. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s right at all.'”
Cheri decided to go to college in the early 2000s because she thought that, as a single mom like Glod, a college degree would allow her to earn more money through a steady career. She eventually dropped out because her student loans became too burdensome, and she acknowledged that she wished she had thought harder about the implications of taking out a loan before she did so.
She said that she supports the Trump administration’s stance that loans should be paid back, and she made payments as often as she could. But she has not paid off her debt since the pandemic, and she’s not financially prepared to start back up again.
“When I start reading about coming after us and attacking our Social Security checks, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to end up on the streets,’ because you can’t stop it,” Cheri said.
Cheri said she isn’t sure what her future student-loan payments will look like, and whether she’ll end up defaulting. She said that she believes that “if you borrow something, you have to give it back,” but she doesn’t think the abrupt restart of collections is the right approach.
“I’m not going to bash the Trump administration. But that being said, I think that turning people over to collections is a very drastic move after what we just went through over the past four years,” Cheri said. “I’m opposed to that.”
‘I’m just scared that I won’t get next month’s check’
Vickie Bright, 64, received a letter from her student-loan servicer on April 10 that her account is 180 days past due and would be reported to credit agencies.
To make up for her missed payments, her servicer sent her a billing statement with a $2,830 payment due on May 13 — a big surge from her regular $350 monthly payments. She said she can’t afford those extra bills. Social Security is her only income — and now she’s concerned that income will soon be diminished.
“During the pandemic, I kept all my bills paid. And so my credit score was going up, and now I’m sure it’s just going to hit rock bottom again,” Bright said. “It impacts every aspect of your life. I wake up in the morning and I think about it. I’m just scared that I won’t get next month’s check.”
The New York Federal Reserve’s quarterly household debt and credit report found that in the first quarter of 2025, the number of student-loan borrowers who moved into serious delinquency surged to 8.04%, up from 0.8% one year prior. The report’s researchers said on a press call that following the pandemic pause on collections and credit reporting, the increase was expected, but it means that millions more borrowers are at risk of facing the severe consequences of default.
Bright said she’s going to contact her servicer for help getting on an affordable repayment plan, but she doesn’t see an end in sight to her student-loan payments.
“It is unbelievable that I live in America and they prize dollars over people,” Bright said. “It’s kind of heartbreaking because at least I still have a home at the moment. And there are people who don’t, and they still expect this stuff from them. It’s hopeless on top of hopeless.”
Do you have a story to share about your student loans? Are you concerned about defaulting? Contact this reporter at [email protected].
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