owes the federal government more than $126,000. But what started as an investment in her daughter’s future is affecting her own prospects.
A divorced mom, she earns around $40,000 a year working at a drug rehabilitation clinic in New Jersey. She hopes to soon complete a drug counseling certification that may increase her salary but acknowledges she’s far from zeroing out her balance.
“What I’m looking at right now is paying it over 20 years, which will make me 82,” Rizzo said.
She joins a growing list of parents 60 and older who are delaying their retirement because of Parent PLUS loans, a program that started in the early 1980s to help parents pay for their children’s college educations. A recent NerdWallet survey found that for up to 26 percent of parents or guardians with Parent PLUS, also known as Direct PLUS, loan debt will not retire as initially planned.
Rizzo said she took out seven Parent PLUS loans to pay for her daughter’s eight semesters at Skidmore College in New York.
