• Helena, 58, has $145,000 in student debt that she's struggling to pay off.
  • She's been unable to hold steady employment and turned to multiple forms of work for income.
  • Things may get worse now that loan payments are set to resume in October.

When Helena, now 58, was in fourth grade, she had a pen pal in Ohio — and she remembers her mother instructing her to write and rewrite the letters to her pen pal until it best reflected her education at that point.

"My mother made me practice again and again to perfection because she wanted the person who received the letter to be like, 'Wow, this is amazing,'" Helena said. Insider granted her request that her last name be withheld for privacy. Her full identity is known to Insider.

After that, Helena knew she wanted to pursue higher education. Since she could not afford to finance her programs out of pocket, she took out about $80,000 in student loans for her bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology, the latter of which she earned in 2009. Initially, she was confident she could find a job that would allow her to pay off those loans. But graduating in the aftermath of the Great Recession — and caring for her three young children — Helena couldn't find a steady career and accepted a part-time job in retail. 

Because of her minimal income, she could not afford to pay off any of her student loans for a period, and interest accrued. Her balance now stands at $145,000, according to documents reviewed by Insider.

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"It was a bleak time where I couldn't make a payment," she said, adding that she paid medical bills instead. "But sometimes I would sell stuff on eBay, and I would make a $500 payment or a $1,000 payment. But as much as I would pay, it would get nowhere because the interest kept growing."

Since Helena files taxes jointly with her husband, her payments on income-driven repayment plans are calculated based on both incomes, and she's unable to afford the monthly payment on her own. Her concerns are even more heightened with federal payments about to resume after a more than three-year pause.

Interest on student loans began accruing again last week, and borrowers' first bills are due in October. Helena is still waiting to see what her monthly payment will be once her income-driven-repayment form is processed, she said, but she knows that whatever it is, it will strain her and her family's finances and retirement outlook.

"I firmly believe in paying," Helena said. "It's just been very painful because I have the disappointment of not getting the career that I want, and then having so much debt."

'I didn't understand how burdensome the interest would be'

Since Helena earned her degrees, she said she'd been doing everything in her power to gain a steady stream of income, to no avail.

"I didn't understand how burdensome the interest would be," she said.

After her retail job, she turned to companies such as Instacart and Amazon Flex for work, but those jobs are on a first-come, first-served basis, making income from them unreliable.

"It's, like, $7 a job, which means you go to the location, you shop for the person, which may take an hour, and then you drive it to that location, which may be way out of bounds," Helena said, adding that she was "just trying to come up with something so I could pay all my loans." 

What's more, she believes it's harder to get a job as she ages "because no one wants you," she said. 

As an older borrower, Helena is far from alone in her concerns. Insider previously spoke with a variety of borrowers approaching retirement still dealing with significant debt burdens. One 70-year-old borrower said in 2021: "When student loans took over my life, I stopped looking forward to anything. You are on a hamster wheel, and you will not get off."

'It makes me feel tremendously hopeless'

The Education Department has implemented a few measures to make the transition back into repayment a bit easier for borrowers since payments are set to resume in October. Those include a 12-month "on-ramp" period starting in October, during which any missed payments will not be reported to credit agencies, though interest will still accrue.

The department also announced the new SAVE income-driven repayment plan, which aims to lower borrowers' monthly payments, and it said that 4 million borrowers were already enrolled. The plan is also meant to prevent interest from building on balances if the borrower continues to make monthly payments.

Still, many borrowers — including Helena — are hoping for more-substantive relief, even though the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden's first plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower. He's trying again using a different law, but it'll take time. Meanwhile, Helena hopes one day she can enjoy time with her family without her debt hanging over her head. If she knew she would be in this situation, she said she would never have pursued higher education.

"I'm not looking forward to retirement, and I think more help needs to go to older people who are unemployed, sitting on the sidelines, and just trying to survive," Helena said.

"It's my faith. That's the thing that's sustained me," she added. "Because otherwise, if I look at the debt, it makes me feel tremendously hopeless."