A modern financial dilemma: Will I retire before paying off my student loans?
After turning 65 last Christmas, C. Lynn Hawkins started collecting Social Security. She uses about half her monthly check to rent a small Chicago apartment for seniors.
She’s gotten used to calls from loan servicers for an educational debt she hasn’t been able to pay, but lately, letters from the government have come too, telling her that tax refunds and part of her Social Security check will be withheld.
“I was trying to better myself,” Mrs. Hawkins says about her decision in 2012 to enroll in a certified medical assistant program at a for-profit school advertised locally and on TV.
The school promised students it would lead them to a job. But when she graduated in 2014, “it did not happen,” she says.
Instead, she was shocked to find out that within the paperwork, she had inadvertently agreed to a $30,000 loan. She found a job in public transportation on her own, but it
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