Taking out student loans for college without a clear repayment plan can haunt a household for years, and Kris Ann Valdez and her husband have the receipts. Writing in Federal Student Aid-era terms that will resonate with millions of families, Valdez describes how she graduated debt-free on a full academic scholarship while her husband brought around $20,000 in student loans into their marriage.
The gap between their starting positions shaped everything that followed, and the couple eventually turned their experience into professional advice as university admissions counsellors.
A $1.87 Trillion Problem Neither of Them Saw Coming
The Valdez family’s story sits inside a much larger one. Americans now owe $1.87 trillion in federal and private student loan debt as of the first quarter of 2026, up 3.3% from the same period a year earlier, according to LendingTree’s student loan debt statistics. Of that total, $140.38 billion is private student loan debt through September 2025.
Among those most directly affected are recent graduates. Some 47% of the class of 2024 bachelor’s degree recipients who finished at four-year public and private non-profit colleges carried student loan debt, leaving school with an average of $29,560 in federal and private borrowing, LendingTree reports. Across all borrowers, 44.6 million people held federal student debt as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2025.
Delinquency is rising sharply. Some 10.34% of student loans were 90 days or more past due as of the first quarter of 2026, up from 7.74% in the first quarter of 2025 and from 6.16% at the height of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2021, according to LendingTree.
How Deferring Student Loans for College Can Make Debt Worse
One of the practical lessons the couple absorbed early was the cost of hitting pause on repayment. Each time they deferred her husband’s loans, interest kept accruing. That reflects how the system is designed: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) notes that forbearance can be granted for up to 12 months at a time, but borrowers remain responsible for interest that accrues throughout that period, and servicers may add it to the principal when forbearance ends.
The mechanics of deferment carry a similar sting. For Direct Loans and other federally-owned loans, interest is capitalised after a deferment on an unsubsidised loan, according to CFPB guidance on repaying student debt. That means borrowers who pause payments can find themselves owing more than they originally borrowed. The couple’s response was to take on side work, including proctoring ACT tests and working weddings, to pay down the balance faster.
The experience informed a slogan they later used with students: ‘graduate college in the least amount of time possible with the least amount of debt.’
What the Couple Now Tell Their Own Children
Valdez was 14 when she overheard her parents say they would not pay for a four-year university for their children. The shock, she writes, eventually turned into motivation. She finished high school with a full academic scholarship to any in-state university, commuted to campus, took on extra credits every semester including summers, and graduated in three years, accepting $2,000 a year from her parents toward expenses.
Her siblings found their own versions of the scrappy path. One sister began community college at 15; a brother launched a business as a teenager. Meanwhile, Valdez watched friends without degrees out-earn some graduates by entering the workforce earlier and building entrepreneurial skills, unburdened by loan repayments.
She and her husband, drawing on their admissions-counsellor years, saw families routinely accept six-figure loan balances as the default cost of the ‘full experience.’ They are taking a different approach with their own children. The couple say they will not pay tens of thousands of dollars for their children to attend university and will not encourage an 18-year-old to take on $100,000 in debt for a career path that may never realistically allow repayment.
Their plan instead is to help their children work through the scholarship process, explain how student loan interest and capitalisation actually function, and explore community college, trade school, or earlier entry into the workforce as genuine alternatives, not consolation prizes.
The rising delinquency rate, now above 10%, suggests that a growing number of borrowers are learning those lessons the hard way. Families who visit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can find free tools covering forbearance, deferment, and income-based repayment before committing to a loan, not after.