What we aren’t talking about as often is credit card debt. Consumer debt recently exceeded $4 trillion for the first time, according to the Federal Reserve. The average American has a credit card balance of $4,293 and 1 in 3 people are afraid they’ll max out their credit cards when they make a large purchase (and most defined “large” as anything over $100).

Although research shows that young people are hesitant to take on credit card debt, one survey found that there are actually more older millennials who have outstanding credit card debt than have student loan debt. Millennials are also more likely to take out personal loans, which can be used for anything from consolidating existing debt to paying for a vacation or a wedding.

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You might be thinking: Millennials can’t avoid student loan debt and a college education is worth it, but it’s downright irresponsible to take on so much credit card debt. Young people just don’t understand how credit works, or they don’t care.

The reality for many millennials with credit card debt is very different — I know, I used to be one of them.

I still remember how I felt when I picked up my mail from the box downstairs in our on-campus apartment my junior year and found my first offer to apply for a credit card, a Discover student card. I was both excited at the opportunity to manage my financial future and terrified that I would wind up trapped in a pile of debt I could never dig myself out of.

I knew that credit cards should always be used responsibly — that you should never spend money you don’t have, that it made the most sense to pay off your balance in full before the due date every month, that racking up debt could seriously damage my credit score. I also knew that in the first two years of college, I’d had to borrow money from friends more times than I could count because I needed textbooks or a bus ticket home when we were required to leave campus for breaks.

So I applied for the credit card, and within days I was approved and had a $500 credit line.

At first, I tried to manage the card responsibly, following the financial advice my dad gave me that he’d never had enough financial freedom to follow himself. I didn’t want to pay more money for items because I’d accumulated a bunch of interest. I would go to the mall with my roommates on the weekend and resist the urge to splurge on new clothes with money I didn’t have in cash or in my bank account. But it’s also exhausting constantly denying yourself happiness when you’re poor, so there were occasional times when I pulled out a credit card, like when we all went out to Japanese food to celebrate my roommate’s 20th birthday.

As I spent small amounts and paid them off quickly, Discover increased my available credit to $1,000 and sent me a free report showing that my score had improved. I remember thinking, maybe everything will be okay after all.

Then I went home for five weeks for winter break and found out my dad and I were in danger of having our heat, electricity, and internet shut off. We both pleaded with representatives on the phone to put us on a payment plan to no avail. He was a night shift cab driver who was having trouble working due to his disabilities, and he’d already been making significantly less money per month than he did before the recession because people couldn’t afford to take cabs anymore.

“I’ll pay the bills if you can pay me back at least some of it,” I offered. At school, I was living off a stipend thanks to grants and scholarships. I also had two on-campus tutoring jobs that paid a little more than minimum wage in Massachusetts, which gave me enough spending money to put gas in my car and pay my phone bill each month.

We needed heat through the winter, and I needed the internet to research summer jobs and internships and get started on my senior thesis. I paid our bills with my credit card and cringed when I saw my available credit start to disappear. One study found that 1 in 5 millennials are helping to financially support their aging parents, and giving their parents an average of $18,250 a year. One third of that financial assistance goes toward living expenses such as food and housing.

The reality is that being poor is expensive. Every time I’d just about caught up with the latest round of credit card charges — $150 here for an emergency car repair on my 1998 Buick Century, $50 there on a book that the professor didn’t put on the syllabus before the semester started, $200 to pay off overdue bills to help my dad — something else would come up.

And then, during the fall of my senior year, my dad suffered from a traumatic brain injury during an on-the-job car accident. While it had been difficult for him to work before, now it was nearly impossible. As a cab driver, he was an independent contractor, not an employee, so he didn’t have any of the protections employees can get, like paid medical leave or unemployment benefits. If he couldn’t work, he simply wasn’t paid. The meager stipend and part-time jobs I had weren’t enough to keep us both afloat in an emergency.

The credit card charges mounted. When things were getting really desperate and our heat was about to be turned off in the middle of winter again, I even applied for a predatory payday loan online. I was denied because my credit score had dropped thanks to my high balances. I sat in my bed, covered in as many blankets as possible, wondering how cold the apartment would get if we didn’t have heat. Eventually, after searching the internet, I found another scammy credit card company that would give me a credit line of $400 in minutes with an APR of 29.9 percent.

By the time I’d become too untrustworthy to qualify for another line of credit, I had almost $5,000 in credit card debt across six cards and no plans to pay it off. My highest interest rate was 30.49 percent. I barely survived my senior year of college and first year after graduation, making only the $25 and $35 minimum payments on each card respectively.

I was only able to start tackling my debt when I began working full-time and freelancing on the side. I was really fortunate that I lived with my partner, so we shared bills and expenses and helped each other out during tough financial situations. She graduated with more student debt than I did, including a couple of private loans, so our priorities were paying off her highest interest student loans and my predatory credit cards as soon as possible. She also understood my frustration with credit, as she fell into a similar trap with her credit card after she was suddenly laid off from her first post-college job.

With our two incomes, we finally had enough for necessities with some to spare. Every month, I would throw more than the minimum payment at my credit cards, starting with those with the highest interest rates and balances. Whenever I had an unexpected amount of money, like if I got more well-paying freelance work that month or I received a bonus at work, I’d funnel $200-500 into paying off another card.

In December 2018, I sent in the last payment to the first credit card I opened from Discover back in 2013. With that payment, I’d paid off all my credit cards in full. I never thought I’d sign in and see a $0 balance due again; I no longer have to worry about years of interest fees piling up on what was originally a $50 purchase. My credit score also improved (although marginally) and I’m finally in the average bracket instead of poor, an assessment that feels even more ironic when I think about the fact that I’ve been poor my entire life and I’m only now just catching up to middle class.

I’m still a little scared to use my credit cards now, even responsibly. Last month at the checkout at Target, I used my store credit card for the first time in years, saving 5 percent off my total purchase. When the balance popped up in my account in a few days, I paid it in full 10 days before the due date.

Growing up poor didn’t just mean that I entered college less academically up to speed than my peers. It also meant that my family had limited financial resources to help pay for college. So, I depended on student loans. I earned a bachelor’s degree—and $40,000 of debt to go with it. I managed to pay it off during my service in the military, so I went to graduate school. In record time, I earned a PhD—and another $100,000 of debt.

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I’m one of millions on the debt-dependent path to the American Dream. Our journey stands in stark contrast to those who had financial support. My colleague, for example, received her graduate degree from the same university that I attended—but she had help from family. She graduated without student debt, and started building home equity before she turned 25. She even had enough to spare that she was able to take advantage of employer retirement benefits, too. Her four kids will likely have their college paid for before they finish high school.

My colleague still had to work hard. She studied, saved, and scrimped when she had to. But her path was eased because wealth was passed down at critical stages along the way. For most Americans that just isn’t an option, and it contributes to growing economic inequality in our nation. It also undermines the oft-repeated promise that a college degree is a catalyst of economic mobility and equal opportunity.

Our current debt-based system widens the gap in educational attainment by race and class, reduces graduation rates among students who make it to college, distorts career choices, constrains entrepreneurship, delays people from buying homes and building families, reduces retirement savings and overall net worth, and lengthens the time it takes to reach median wealth in the United States. In short, it asks students to compromise their long-term economic well-being for a chance at a higher education that is supposed to safeguard them from poverty (with mixed results).

It wasn’t always like this. The GI Bill—signed into law after World War II—made higher education possible for millions of veterans. Returning veterans presented a crisis, because they needed a college education to be able to re-enter the workforce and contribute to the economy. The GI Bill was a policy pivot. It prioritized veterans’ long-term needs and reframed higher education as a broadly-shared good, rather than an exclusive purview of the privileged. Within eight years it returned every dollar invested nearly seven-fold.

Now it’s time for another pivot. We need a financial aid system that performs to the standards of our American values—where the effort we put in and the ability we possess determine our economic outcomes.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton proposed policies that would make college free for many low-income and middle class students. While those policies have been put on hold, another proposal that could move us in the right direction is creating Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) nationwide. Today, there are 42 CSA programs in 29 states that open accounts for children at birth or in kindergarten, endow them with an initial deposit (financed by public or philanthropic sources), and supplement families’ savings through matching grants.

A family’s CSA savings might be modest in total dollars, but they are significant nonetheless. For example, the average out-of-state cost of a four-year degree at a public university is about $34,000. Every student could accrue that sum by age 18 if they had a CSA that received an $8,400 deposit at birth invested in stock/bond portfolios, plus an additional deposit of $5 per month by the family. This would cost an estimated $34 billion annually—less than the $74 billion in government costs for student loan forgiveness projected for 2017.

CSAs are not a silver bullet for disparities in education writ large. Even so, they could help to build an accessible education pipeline that would make it possible for more people to make it through college without crippling debt. That can begin to even out the returns that two students—one poor and one privileged—get from the same credentials.

While student debt may not intuitively register as something that plagues the poor, student debt delinquency and defaults are concentrated in low-income areas, even though lower-income borrowers also tend to have much smaller debts. Defaults and delinquencies among low-income Americans escalated following the Great Recession of 2008, a period when many states disinvested from public colleges and universities. The result was higher costs of college, which has led to larger loans.

Low-income students are often left at a dramatic academic disadvantage in the first place. For example, students who work full-time on top of college classes can’t cover the cost of tuition or living expenses, and working while in school can actually shrink the chance of graduating altogether. Moreover, these students are less likely to have access to career counseling or outside financial resources to help them pay for school, making the payoff negligible at best.

The inequity is so crushing that an alarming number of these students—predominantly students of color—are dropping out of school altogether. One-third of low-income student borrowers at public four-year schools drop out, a rate 10 percent higher than the rest of student borrowers overall.

When it comes to for-profit colleges, the story gets even worse. These institutions often target prospective students who are low-income while falsely assuring positive job and economic prospects upon graduating. Many students do end up dropping out, and even those who do graduate do not always receive a quality education that leaves them prepared for success—or with an income that matches up with their monthly loan payments. Their degrees too often cannot compete in the job market, leaving many of these students jobless.

This confluence of factors explains why borrowers who owe the least tend to be lower-income, and are the most likely to fall behind or default on their monthly payments. As the Mapping Student Debt project has found, people with more debt are less likely to default on their loan payments because they have the most access to wealth, whether through family money or financial assets or educational degrees. And it’s not hard to connect the dots. The biggest borrowers tend to be the biggest earners, so those who take out large loans to pay for graduate or professional school are less likely to default or fall behind because they’re in high-earning jobs. The Department of Education estimated that 7 percent of graduate borrowers default, versus 22 percent of those who only borrow for undergraduate studies. Default can actually lead to an increase in student loan debt because of late fees and interest, as well as a major decline in credit, ineligibility for additional student aid, and even wage garnishment at the request of the federal government.

Fortunately, there are solutions already in place that can help borrowers get out of default and back on their feet.  For borrowers with federal loans, the Department of Education has a number of income-driven repayment programs (IDR) that cap a borrower’s monthly payment to as low as 10 percent of their discretionary income. Rather than being saddled with debt and an income that doesn’t realistically allow for repayment, borrowers can take advantage of programs such as PAYE, REPAYE, and Income-Based-Repayment to make their monthly loan payments proportional to their income. And some low-income borrowers might even qualify to pay nothing at all if they fall beneath certain income levels.

These plans won’t just help borrowers with high debt balances.  IDR is especially helpful for borrowers with smaller balances because it reduces the monthly burden while keeping more money in pockets to cover expenses for food, housing, and other basic needs that borrowers must choose between in the face of overwhelming monthly payments.

Yet woefully few borrowers are aware of these plans that have the potential to make sure low-income borrowers aren’t paying more than they can afford. Fully 51 percent of student loan borrowers nationwide are eligible for these programs but only 15 percent are enrolled.

A dream of a higher education shouldn’t be a sentence to years—or an entire lifetime—of poverty. With federal IDR programs, the process of paying back any amount of student debt can be much less draining of an obligation, especially for our most vulnerable citizens. It’s on all of us to make sure those who can benefit the most from IDR are aware of it.

Over the last few years, for-profit colleges have come under fire from the Senate HELP committee, several federal agencies, and 37 state attorneys, with good reason. The for-profit education business model provides no incentive for schools to produce successful, educated college graduates. As a result, over half of the students who attend these schools fail to obtain a degree and struggle with mounting student loan debt. Those students fortunate enough to graduate have a hard time securing employment, as employers increasingly turn away candidates with degrees from for-profit schools.

For-profit colleges use a variety of unethical and sometimes illegal practices to persuade students to attend their schools. Some schools get leads on potential students through fake job postings on websites like craigslist or monster.com. Recent reports show a few top for-profit colleges utilize fake online health insurance and food stamp applications to collect information on potential students. Individuals who fall victim to phishing schemes like these are subsequently harassed with calls from for-profit schools until they speak with admissions representatives. Students report being called up to twenty times in a single morning, or as late as 11 p.m. When students finally succumb to the pressure and speak with a representative, they are subjected to recruitment tactics that are far more abusive.

 An example of training materials for recruiters at a for-profit college

Admissions representatives at several large for-profit schools say management promotes a variety of exploitative practices to secure enrollment. These tactics include asking callers—many of whom are low-income or people of color—to imagine what they will buy when they make six-figures, or how their family will feel when they no longer rely on a minimum wage job. Many representatives go as far as telling callers how worthless they are with just a high school diploma. Many students who were actively recruited in this manner were unable to afford—or clearly incapable of completing—the program. Some students even struggled with a range of disabilities such as brain damage and learning disorders. In one particularly high profile case, a Corporal for the U.S. Marines was enrolled at a large for-profit college, but was so severely impaired by a traumatic brain injury that he could not remember what classes he was taking.

Students who enroll as a result of this kind of manipulation often sign themselves into financial ruin. However, as long as the students attend classes, the school turns a profit. The entire business model of for-profit schools relies on cheating victims out of their dollars and dreams, which ultimately increases their reliance on safety net programs.

In contrast, community college provides crucial alternatives for those most frequently victimized by for-profit schools—people with low-incomes and people of color. Students with low-incomes are disproportionately affected by social factors (financial instability, health issues, transportation issues) that discourage investing financial resources in brick-and-mortar schools, in deference to online education. For-profit schools take advantage of this instability, promising increased upward mobility coupled with the flexibility of online schooling. As a result, low-income students enroll in for-profit schools at nearly four times the rate of other students.

 An example of student “profiles” targeted by recruiters at a for-profit college

By providing low-income students with the opportunity to attend community college at no cost, President Obama’s plan virtually eliminates the consumer base of these profit-seeking colleges, ending their large-scale fraud. Under President Obama’s plan, students receive full tuition funding if they are enrolled at least half-time at community college and are earning above a 2.5 GPA. The proposal is also beneficial because it permits students to receive Pell grants while they are at community college; this policy would help families afford living expenses while the primary caretaker focuses on school.

Obama’s initiative encourages low-income, at-risk students to consider local community colleges before for-profit schools, thereby increasing their potential economic mobility and financial wellbeing. Current estimates suggest that as many as 9 million students would benefit from the initiative.

While Obama’s proposal is not a blank check, it provides much more flexibility for students with low-incomes. More importantly, the plan could prevent millions of our country’s most disadvantaged people from enrolling in schools that prove far better at exploiting students than educating them.

While student debt is an issue that impacts Americans from all income brackets, races, ages, and from every part of the country, low-income Americans face unique challenges:

Student debt has a greater impact on low-income borrowers than other Americans. In fact, borrowers in the least affluent one-fifth of American households faced education debt that averaged 24 percent of their income in 2010. The average for all households was 6 percent.

Grant aid is not nearly enough to cover the cost of college for low-income families. Even after factoring in grant aid, a family in the lowest quintile—with an average income of $17,011—would have to pay more than 70 percent of their income to cover college costs.

When starting out, students from low- and middle-income households already face a higher burden. They are less likely to have family assistance and more likely to have other pressures, such as a part-time job or family caretaking role in addition to classes. And many low-income students avoid applying to college altogether, citing the cost. This has resulted in a shrinking economic diversity at schools.

Low-income Americans have become a target of private lenders and for-profit colleges. Some private lenders have even manipulated financially unsophisticated borrowers in an effort to profit.

What’s more, for-profit colleges often target and take advantage of low-income individuals and people of color, leaving them with high levels of debt that they are later unable to pay off. Investigations into these corporate education giants have found deceptive and misleading practices to recruit students and more than half of students at for-profit colleges drop out within a few years.

Despite numerous investigations highlighting the deceptive nature of the for-profit college industry, this issue has ballooned. More students are enrolling in for-profit institutions, more students are dropping out before receiving a degree, and CEOs of these education corporations continue to make millions.

Mane Lavadenz knows firsthand about what a bad deal for-profit colleges are for many students.  After the real estate market collapsed, it was difficult for her to earn a living and support herself. She enrolled in some courses at UEI College, a for-profit school. Advisors there assured her, she says, that her student debt would be manageable and that she would have no trouble finding a job after graduating.

But that simply wasn’t the case: Like many of her classmates, Lavadenz graduated without any job prospects and, she says, UEI did nothing to help her. Lavadenz was stuck with $9,000 in student loans, which has now accrued to $10,000. Her experience is hardly unique. Former students of for-profit schools have found that their schools overpromised on the kinds of jobs they would land after earning a degree.

Further, for-profit colleges charge their students over 3.5 times more than public institutions, but they spend far less per student on instructional costs than public colleges and universities. In the 2008-2009 school year, for-profit schools spent $2,659 per student on instructional costs; by comparison, public universities spent an average of $9,418 per student and private non-profit universities spent $15,289.

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Now is the time to make student loan debt a top priority in our nation. That is why, earlier this year, Generation Progress and dozens of our progressive allies launched the Higher Ed, Not Debt campaign—a coordinated effort to address the existing $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, caused in part by the predatory practices of the for-profit industry.

More than 60 organizations have already signed on to the campaign, including: the American Federation of Teachers, Demos, Jobs with Justice, One Wisconsin Now, SEIU, Scholarship America, Student Veterans of America, Working Families Organization, and the Young Invincibles.

While for-profit colleges are a main focus of the campaign, we’re utilizing this broad reach to focus on four key elements: college accessibility and affordability; addressing the existing $1.2 trillion in debt; civic engagement; and educating the public about the role of Wall Street in the privatization of higher education. In partnership with Higher Ed, Not Debt, Generation Progress will continue to advance long-term policy solutions, like holding private institutions accountable for bad lending practices and giving borrowers the ability to refinance student loans.

Student loan debt has severe and visible impacts on the American economy. Borrowers with tens of thousands of dollars in debt are unable to purchase homes, start families, obtain employment in certain fields, and save for retirement. It’s time to address this problem in full force. I encourage others to join in the fight to create long-term solutions to protect current and future borrowers from the economically crippling effects of student loan debt.