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Since Betancur’s parents weren’t helping him pay and he was pursuing graduate school, he was eligible for higher borrowing limits. Betancur took the maximum allowable and added private loans to cover the rest. He wasn’t alone.

When Betancur opened his chiropractic practice in the early 2000s, a loan servicer advised him to put his federal student loans into a payment pause to get his business off the ground, he said. Betancur focused instead on his private loans, which took about 10 years to pay off.

He spent 15 years in and out of forbearance, deferment and repayment on his federal loans. In the years when his business did well, he would make payments toward the debt. When money was tight, he was advised to pause or defer those payments. All the while interest was accruing on his seemingly unchanged balance.

Courtney Greenstein’s budget has been stretched thin by payments on credit cards, a personal loan and rent. The 50-year-old senior employee-benefits analyst also supports her two adult children, who live with her.

With little left over, Greenstein hasn’t made student-loan payments on her $40,000 in debt since she finished her business degree in 2018, decades after first trying college. She had earlier pursued a pharmacy degree at the University of Connecticut, but soon learned that she didn’t enjoy the field and failed out after the first year. By the time she went back to school, she was also juggling motherhood.

“I took every student loan I could possibly take,” Greenstein said. “Not only was it helping me pay for school, but it was supporting me and my family.”