"That's no excuse," she said. "I dropped the ball, and I defaulted." Originally, the loan servicer asked her to get back on a standard repayment plan - one where the payments would be far above what she could afford. "I told them I just didn't have it," she said. "And that's the first time I heard about an Income-Based Repayment plan." Since then, her loan servicer has auto-debited 10% of her discretionary income every month.