Roughly 43 million Americans are carrying federal student loan debt right now, according to Federal Student Aid. For borrowers who went back for a graduate degree — teachers, social workers, people who believed education was the ladder — the average balance often climbs well past $50,000. Marcus Dillard, a 34-year-old high school math teacher in Atlanta, Georgia, knows that number intimately. His is $62,000.
When I first reached out to Marcus through a mutual contact at a local educator advocacy group, he took almost two weeks to respond. When he finally did, he was apologetic. “I’ve been avoiding a lot of things lately,” he told me over the phone. “Emails. Bank apps. Basically anything with a dollar sign attached to it.”
We met in person at a coffee shop near his school on a Thursday afternoon in late February 2026. He came in still wearing his lanyard, a stack of ungraded quizzes tucked under his arm. He looked like someone who hadn’t fully slept in about two years — which, it turns out, is roughly how long his financial situation had been quietly deteriorating.
A Master’s Degree That Was Supposed to Help
Marcus grew up in a household in South Atlanta where money simply was not discussed. “My parents paid the bills and that was it,” he said. “There was no conversation about interest rates or budgeting. You just didn’t talk about it.” He carried that silence into adulthood.
He finished his undergraduate degree in mathematics at Georgia State in 2013 and started teaching immediately. He liked it. But the salary — roughly $47,000 when he started — felt thin. A colleague suggested the master’s program in education at a state university would bump his pay grade. He enrolled in 2017, graduated in 2019, and borrowed $62,000 in federal loans to cover the difference between his stipend and the actual cost of the program.
The salary bump materialized — he now earns approximately $58,000 annually — but it never felt like the lift he anticipated. “By the time I finished, my wife and I had our first kid,” he told me. “And then the loan payments started. And then we had our second. It just stacked.”
His wife, Deja, had been working part-time as a dental hygienist — enough to keep the household functional, even comfortable some months. But after their second child arrived in the spring of 2024, she cut her hours further. Childcare for two children in the Atlanta metro area runs between $2,000 and $2,800 per month, according to estimates from Child Care Aware of America. For the Dillards, who relied on a family member for partial coverage, the cost was lower — but still between $1,100 and $1,400 a month depending on the week.
When the Numbers Stop Making Sense
By mid-2025, Marcus and Deja were paying roughly $690 a month on his standard federal loan repayment plan. Add rent, utilities, groceries, childcare, and the minimum payments on two credit cards that had crept up during a lean stretch in 2023, and the household was running a deficit most months.
“I knew the math,” Marcus said, and he almost smiled at the irony. “I teach math. But knowing and looking at it are two different things. I just stopped looking.” He told me he hadn’t opened his bank’s mobile app in about eight months by the time we spoke. He paid what he could, when he could, and tried not to think about the rest.
This pattern — avoidance as a coping strategy — is common among borrowers under financial strain. Research from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has noted that borrowers often disengage from their loan servicers precisely when their balances grow most unwieldy. For Marcus, the avoidance meant he had no idea that programs he was likely eligible for had existed for years.
The Conversation That Changed His Monthly Budget
The turning point, as Marcus described it, was unremarkable in the way many turning points are. He was eating lunch in the break room in October 2025 when a colleague — a veteran teacher named Patricia who had been in the district for nearly 20 years — mentioned offhand that she had recently had her federal student loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Marcus had heard of PSLF before. He had filed it away as something complicated, something that probably did not apply to him, something to look into later. Patricia walked him through the basics: public school teachers working full-time for a qualifying government employer who make 120 qualifying payments on an income-driven repayment plan can have their remaining federal loan balance forgiven, tax-free. According to Federal Student Aid’s PSLF page, borrowers must be enrolled in an IDR plan and submit annual Employment Certification Forms.
Marcus had been teaching at a public school for six years. He was already past the halfway mark.
The Numbers After the Switch
By December 2025, Marcus’s monthly federal loan payment had dropped from approximately $690 under the standard plan to roughly $310 under IBR, based on his household’s adjusted gross income. That is a reduction of about $380 per month — not a windfall, but real breathing room on a tight budget.
“It felt like someone had turned down the volume,” Marcus told me. “Not silence. But I could think again.”
The Dillards also applied the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit on their 2025 return. For two qualifying children under age 13, eligible families can claim up to $6,000 in qualifying expenses, though the credit itself is calculated as a percentage of that amount based on income. For the Dillards’ income range, the non-refundable credit reduced their tax liability — it did not generate a cash refund, but it offset what they owed. Their tax preparer also ensured they claimed the full Child Tax Credit of $2,000 per qualifying child, a benefit that had gone partially unclaimed on their 2023 return due to a filing error.
Marcus was candid that the relief was partial. The credit card balances — roughly $7,400 spread across two cards — have not shrunk meaningfully. The anxiety around money, he admitted, does not disappear because one line item drops. “I still don’t love looking at my bank account,” he said. “But now I look. That’s different.”
What Marcus Wishes He Had Known Earlier
When I asked Marcus what he would say to another teacher sitting in the same break room he had been in before that October lunch, he thought for a moment before answering. “I would say: the thing you’re avoiding is smaller than the thing you’re imagining,” he said. “Not small. But smaller.”
He is four years away from potentially qualifying for PSLF forgiveness, assuming he continues teaching at a qualifying public school and maintains his IBR enrollment. That four years is not guaranteed — policy and legal landscapes shift, and nothing about student loan relief has been stable. He knows this.
As I packed up my recorder and Marcus picked up his ungraded quizzes, I asked him whether the master’s degree had been worth it. He exhaled. “Ask me in four years,” he said. “If that forgiveness comes through, maybe. If it doesn’t — honestly, I don’t know.”
That uncertainty, more than any specific dollar amount, felt like the most honest summary of where Marcus Dillard stands today. He is no longer drowning. But he is still very much swimming.
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