Student-Loan Debt Is Strangling Gen X (scary)

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Gen X is barreling toward retirement with an excruciating student-loan burden. The six million-plus borrowers aged 50 to 61 have the highest average balance of any age group, at $47,857, according to Federal Student Aid data. Now, as parents and grandparents, they are passing along a skepticism toward higher education and its hefty price tag, part of the broader unraveling of America’s “college for all” ideology.

The oldest Gen Xers were born in 1965, the same year the Higher Education Act created the modern student-loan system. The baby boomers older than them didn’t have the same access, and the millennials younger than them had greater awareness of the long shadow debt can cast. But for a brief window when the “forgotten generation” was reaching college age, student loans conveyed all of the promise of American upward mobility with none of the pitfalls.

Decades later, the promise is an albatross for many, thanks in part to years of student-loan policy changes, conflicting information from servicers and system backlogs. And it’s becoming more burdensome as the instability of America’s student-loan apparatus comes into sharp focus.

The Education Department under President Trump has threatened to confiscate wages from millions of borrowers if they haven’t made payments since the pandemic, when the Biden administration extended the pause on student-debt repayment. A new tax-and-spending law, signed in July, restricts some borrowing and repayment plans, marking a retreat from federal student lending.

More, a lot more

https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/student-loan-debt-gen-x-619cffda?st=FwaYmZ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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