As the Trump administration ramps up its student loan collection efforts, worried borrowers need to ask themselves a key question: Am I delinquent, or in default? The answer determines your best next steps.

“We’ve had a lot of clients contacting us recently who are extremely stressed and, in some cases panicked, about their loan situation,” said Nancy Nierman, assistant director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program in New York.

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However, some borrowers wrongly believe they’ll be subject to wage garnishments or offsets of their retirement benefits — when in fact they are delinquent but not yet in default, Nierman said.

If you’re delinquent, there are things you can do to avoid default. And even those who are in default and at risk for collections can take steps to avoid such outcomes.

“The federal student loan system does provide several paths for bringing loans out of default,” she said.

Nearly 8% of total student debt was reported as 90 days past due in the first quarter of 2025, the New York Fed recently found.

Once you are delinquent for 90 days or more, your student loan servicer will report your past due status to the national credit bureaus, which can lead to a drop in your credit score.

The Federal Reserve predicted in March that some people with a student loan delinquency could see their scores fall by as much as 171 points. (Credit scores typically range from 300 to 850, with around 670 and higher considered good.)

Lower credit scores can lead to higher borrowing costs on consumer loans such as mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

But you’re not considered to be in default on your student loans until you haven’t made your scheduled payment in at least 270 days, the Education Department says.

The federal government has extraordinary collection powers on its student loans and it can seize borrowers’ tax refunds, paychecks and Social Security retirement and disability benefits.

But only those who’ve defaulted on their student loans can face these consequences, experts said.

There are also economic hardship and unemployment deferments available for those who qualify, as well as other ways to keep your loan payments paused while not falling behind.

You can contact the government’s Default Resolution Group and pursue a number of different avenues to get current on your loans, including enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan or signing up for loan rehabilitation. 

You can get out of default on your student loans through rehabilitating or consolidating your debt, Nierman said.

Rehabilitating involves making “nine voluntary, reasonable and affordable monthly payments,” according to the U.S. Department of Education. Those nine payments can be made over “a period of 10 consecutive months,” it said.

Consolidation, meanwhile, may be available to those who “make three consecutive, voluntary, on-time, full monthly payments.” At that point, they can essentially repackage their debt into a new loan.

After you’ve emerged from default, experts also recommend requesting a monthly bill you can afford.

If you don’t know who your loan servicer is, you can find out at Studentaid.gov.

“Explore your options and create a plan for returning your loans back to good standing so you will not be subject to punitive collections activity,” Nierman said.

Long-term care can be costly, extending well beyond $100,000. Yet, financial advisors say many households aren’t prepared to manage the expense.

“People don’t plan for it in advance,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner based in Jacksonville, Florida. “It’s a huge problem.”

Over half, 57%, of Americans who turn 65 today will develop a disability serious enough to require long-term care, according to a 2022 report published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Urban Institute. Such disabilities might include cognitive or nervous system disorders like dementia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, or complications from a stroke, for example.

The average future cost of long-term care for someone turning 65 today is about $122,400, the HHS-Urban report said.

But some people need care for many years, pushing lifetime costs well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — a sum “out of reach for many Americans,” report authors Richard Johnson and Judith Dey wrote.

The number of people who need care is expected to swell as the U.S. population ages amid increasing longevity.

“It’s pretty clear [workers] don’t have that amount of savings in retirement, that amount of savings in their checking or savings accounts, and the majority don’t have long-term care insurance,” said Bridget Bearden, a research and development strategist at the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

“So where is the money going to come from?” she added.

Nationally, it costs about $6,300 a month for a home health aide and $9,700 for a private room in a nursing home for the typical person, according to 2023 data from Genworth, an insurer.

It seems many households are unaware of the potential costs, either for themselves or their loved ones.

For example, 73% of workers say there’s at least one adult for whom they may need to provide long-term care in the future, according to a new poll by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

However, just 29% of these future caregivers — who may wind up footing at least part of the future bill —had estimated the future cost of care, EBRI found. Of those who did, 37% thought the price tag would fall below $25,000 a year, the group said.

The EBRI survey polled 2,445 employees from ages 20 to 74 years old in late 2024.

For example, Medicare may partially cover “skilled” care for the first 100 days, said McClanahan, the founder of Life Planning Partners and a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council. This may be when a patient requires a nurse to help with rehab or administer medicine, for example, she said.

But Medicare doesn’t cover “custodial” care, when someone needs help with daily activities like bathing, dressing, using the bathroom and eating, McClanahan said. These basic everyday tasks constitute the majority of long-term care needs, according to the HHS-Urban report.

Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term care costs today, Bearden said. Not everyone qualifies, though: Many people who get Medicaid benefits are from lower-income households, EBRI’s Bearden said. To receive benefits for long-term care, households may first have to exhaust a big chunk of their financial assets.

“You basically have to be destitute,” McClanahan said.

Republicans in Washington are weighing cuts to Medicaid as part of a large tax-cut package. If successful, it’d likely be harder for Americans to get Medicaid benefits for long-term care, experts said.

Few households have insurance policies that specifically hedge against long-term care risk: About 7.5 million Americans had some form of long-term care insurance coverage in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service.

By comparison, more than 4 million baby boomers are expected to retire per year from 2024 to 2027.

Washington state has a public long-term care insurance program for residents, and other states like California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania are exploring their own.

Long-term care insurance policies make most sense for people who have a high risk of needing care for a lengthy duration, McClanahan said. That may include those who have a high risk of dementia or have longevity in their family history, she said.

McClanahan recommends opting for a hybrid insurance policy that combines life insurance and a long-term care benefit; traditional stand-alone policies only meant for long-term care are generally expensive, she said.

Be wary of how the policy pays benefits, too, she said.

For example, “reimbursement” policies require the insured to choose from a list of preferred providers and submit receipts for reimbursement, McClanahan said. For some, especially seniors, that may be difficult without assistance, she said.

With “indemnity” policies, which McClanahan recommends, insurers generally write benefit checks as soon as the insured qualifies for assistance, and they can spend the money how they see fit. However, the benefit amount is often lower than reimbursement policies, she said.

College commencement is a time of optimism for newly minted graduates. But this year, there’s also more uncertainty about the economy and employment — and grads in some unexpected majors may find they have a leg up.

Majors in nutrition, art history and philosophy all outperformed STEM fields when it comes to employment prospects, according to a recent analysis of labor market outcomes of college graduates by major by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

For computer science and computer engineering, the unemployment rate in those fields was 6.1% and 7.5%, respectively — notably higher than the national average.

By comparison, the unemployment rate for art history majors was 3%, and for nutritional sciences, the unemployment rate was just 0.4%, the New York Fed found. The New York Fed’s report was based on Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates.

Economics and finance majors also fared worse than those in theology and philosophy when it came to the employment rates for recent college graduates, according to the New York Fed.

In general, what you choose to major in has significant implications for your job prospects and future earnings potential.

Majoring in STEM is often touted as the ticket to a well-paying position in good times and bad, and that is mostly true.

In fact, students who pursue a major specifically in computer science or computer engineering — both STEM disciplines — are projected to earn the most right out of school with median wages of $80,000.

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Even so, demand for humanities majors is on the rise, and with good reason, despite some student debt critics taking aim at the low value of some coursework, like “zombie studies,” for example.

At a conference last year, Robert Goldstein, the chief operating officer of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, said the firm was adjusting its hiring strategy for recent grads. “We have more and more conviction that we need people who majored in history, in English, and things that have nothing to do with finance or technology,” Goldstein said.

This demand for liberal arts degrees is due in part to the rise of AI, which drives the need for creative thinking and so-called soft skills. 

Meanwhile, jobs in the the health care sector continue to be in high demand in 2025.

The U.S. economy added 902,000 health care and social assistance jobs last year and employment in health care occupations is “projected to grow much faster than the average” for all U.S. jobs through 2033, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate among nursing majors is just 1.4%, the New York Fed also found.

“Nursing is extremely resilient in times of economic uncertainty, like we ae seeing right now,” said Travis Moore, a registered nurse and healthcare strategist at job site Indeed.

Although the median wage right out of school [for nurses] is lower than it is for economics and finance majors, heading into a possible economic downturn, job security may be a more important measure, he said.

“There’s a significant nursing shortage going on right now,” Moore said — and that “creates a really strong opportunity to get into a career with really low layoffs.”

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