I have worked two jobs my entire life. As a teenager growing up in Alabama, I worked nights at a burger joint and weekends at the record shop. As an grown-up, I worked as an administrative assistant and a florist in order to back myself and my kids after my husband’s premature death. And, now, at age 60, I still work two jobs – as a health administrator and a host at a local diner – in order to pay my learner obligation.

I took on learner loans to get a job that could provide for my household and myself in my older years, but the reverse has happened. I’ve taken money out of my superannuation account to lower my learner obligation payments, which exceed my mortgage payments.

I am far from alone. The number of adults age 60 or older with learner financing obligation has grown sixfold over the history two decades, and the amount of obligation they carry has multiplied nearly 20 times, according to the National buyer Law Center and the recent America Foundation. Today, 9 million debtors 50 and older hold more than $400 billion in learner loans, according to the Education Data Initiative.

Unless President Joe Biden takes swift action to discharge learner obligation in the coming weeks, many of us will never be able to retire.

Although each of us has a distinctive narrative of how obligation buried us alive, most older debtors have one thing in ordinary: We went to school to make our lives better and more stable. But now, decades later, an insurmountable wall of learner obligation blocks this humble objective.

When I became a widow in my 30s, I knew I would require a better paying job to provide for my household. I also wanted to set a excellent example for my two tiny children. Course by course, I worked my way through an associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degree. To my self-esteem, my children both decided to continue to postsecondary education. But lacking reserves or generational affluence, I took out Parent PLUS loans, as millions of people do every year, to back their dreams.

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Older learner financing borrowers deserve to retire in dignity

After 20-plus years of loans, consolidations and regular payments for all three of us, my settlement has ballooned to unpayable proportions, from an initial financing of$80,000 to more than $200,000 today, thanks to 20 years of gain that compounds at a skyrocketing rate. correct now, I accrue $1,100 of gain each month. 

Absent executive action, I do not view any resolution to this circumstance in my lifetime. That’s why I am part of a growing movement of older learner financing borrowers asking the Biden-Harris administration to discharge these loans so we can live out our older years in dignity.   

Too often, we ponder of learner obligation as a youthful person’s issue. But the reality is that millions of older Americans are working well into our golden years to service unpayable learner debts. superannuation is as relevant to our lives as outer space.

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Many of us have loans that are so ancient, they are ineligible for the current alphabet soup of relief programs – PSLF, IDR and SAVE. Although we have been paying for 20, 30 or 40 years, our balances have gone up, not down.

Meanwhile, our incomes are limited and getting lower. Stretching Social safety payments across gas bills, rent, groceries and health worry is tough enough; now we have to add hundreds of dollars in learner financing payments to the settlement. When we can’t make a settlement, our loans uncertainty falling into default, the consequences of which are dire: levy refunds, wages, disability income and even Social safety can get garnished.

But here’s the cruelest part: All of these debts will be canceled when we die, in a procedure known as a “death discharge” in which the federal government writes off billions of dollars of learner obligation held by deceased borrowers.

Between the next settlement and our last breath, the federal government will fee gain, garnish wages and offset our Social safety in the name of learner loans. Because of these loans, we will be denied mortgages. We will receive on second jobs. Our mental and physical health will suffer under the crushing weight of unpayable sums.

When we die, however, the settlement will finally be zero. 

Americans’ obligation will be discharged eventually. They just have to die first.

For this rationale, relieving older Americans of their debts is a sensible policy that deserves back – even from obligation relief skeptics. Let’s face it: These ancient debts are unlikely to be repaid and will get canceled one way or another. Relieving elders of these burdens prior to death makes much more sense than discharging them at our funerals.

Not only would it unburden us to enjoy our twilight years, but it would also be excellent for our families and neighbors. Although you wouldn’t recognize it from our financing statements, we aging learner debtors are doing essential work. We are the teachers, social workers, therapists, nurses’ aides and community sector lawyers. We are raising our children and our grandchildren, and caring for our own elders. Relieving us of our learner obligation is not a drain on community resources, as some critics contend. It supports working families and communities.

Canceling these debts is excellent policy, and it is absolutely feasible. The Department of Education has the power – Biden simply needs to declare the word.

Discharging debts based on a debtor’s age falls squarely within congressionally-approved regulations. Although correct-wing plaintiffs are working multiple angles in the courts to stop Biden’s broad-based cancellation plans, this is a different legal mechanism for delivering relief. In 1966, Congress authorized the Departments of fairness and Treasury to discharge federal debts based on a “debtor’s age.”

The Department of Education discharges loans based on the debtor’s age on a case-by-case basis. It’s period to use this authority at a meaningful scale.

Leading Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump,desire to block learner financing cancellation across the board. Indeed, some have proposed that they will try to reinstate any debts wiped away by the Biden administration (something experts declare will be challenging if not unfeasible to do). 

Regardless, in these final weeks before he retires from the White House, I’m praying that President Biden stands up for people like me. I terror this is my final chance of seeing relief in my lifetime. And one day, I’d like to retire, too. Or at least work only one job.

Renita Walker is a Georgia resident and member of the obligation Collective.