A millennial teacher qualified for student loan forgiveness but turned it down. Is she making the right call?

Alicea logs up to eight hours a week as a therapy associate for Cerebral, an online mental health provider (1). It’s a gig that brings in about $1,500 a month — but she calls it a “really expensive” side hustle. Why? Because it required the same graduate degree that put her in the hole in the first place.

Teachers and second jobs

Teachers taking on extra work is actually more common than most people realize (2). About one in three educators work second jobs driving for Uber or working in food service in the evenings after school. According to a 2026 Gallup study (3), more than half of K-12 teachers say they’re merely “getting by” — a polite way of saying the math just isn't adding up.

Meanwhile, a survey from the Learning Policy Institute shows roughly 60% of teachers took out student loans to fund their education and about 37% are still repaying their outstanding balances of an average $342 per month (4). Also, about 17% hold a second job during the school year, per the National Center for Education Statistics (5).

The thing is, times are a bit tough for teachers. But here's how Alicea is beating the system.

The side hustle she built from her degree

Alicea's teaching journey began in 2016 in Shanghai. The pay was modest, but the cost of living was low enough to get by. That changed the second she touched down New York City in 2020. Suddenly, her $50,000 preschool teaching salary felt like pocket change in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

"It was a really rude awakening coming to New York and not being able to live on a teacher salary," she told CNBC Make It (6).

Alicea worked through several schools before landing at Brilla Public Charter Schools in the Bronx in 2024, where she now earns $90,000 a year as a multilingual learner specialist — a $40,000 jump from where she started.

While doing that, she enrolled in grad school for mental-health counseling in 2021, graduated with her master's degree in June 2025, and began working with Cerebral three months later.

The clinical work also serves a longer purpose. To become a licensed mental health counselor, Alicea needs to log 3,000 clinical hours. Every session she takes on moves her closer to a credential that could significantly help her earn more income.

For now, Alicea caps herself at six to eight clients a week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which still leaves room for her to cook, hit the gym, walk her dogs and take care of herself outside of two demanding jobs.

The debt plan behind the paycheck

Alicea took out roughly $92,000 in student loans to cover four years of grad school tuition and living costs while continuing to teach full-time. She has $61,000 left to pay off. She puts $1,500 a month toward her loans — roughly what her side hustle earns her each month — and estimates she'll clear the debt in four years.

Alicea also has a broader financial structure under this payment: a $5,000 emergency fund, so an unexpected expense doesn't interrupt her debt payments and $10,000 in a high-yield savings account (HYSA) she's building separately.

Besides paying her loan, it would seem this teacher is creating a financial set up that won't collapse when life gets unpredictable.

All good, but Alicea also made a financial decision that deserves some scrutiny.

The forgiveness she's walking away from

As a full-time teacher at a nonprofit charter school, Alicea qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness — a federal program that wipes out remaining federal student loan balances after 10 years of public service employment and 120 monthly payments, tax-free.

Elementary and high school education is the single largest category of PSLF recipients, accounting for roughly 30% of all borrowers who have benefited from the program, according to Brookings Institution data (7).

For teachers, the average balance forgiven runs between $60,000 and $90,000. The program could potentially forgive Alicea’s remaining $61,000 loan (or at least, a huge part of it), but she’d have to work in the public sector for 10 years before she qualifies.

Alicia knows that, but she's choosing to walk away from a $61,000 gift from the government.

"I don't want to be tied to public service for the time required," she told CNBC. "I want to keep my options open for the future."

She’d rather stick to her current four-year payment plan, and get the loan behind her.

Is ditching the PSLF really the right call?

Staying on track for PSLF means 10 more years in a qualifying public-sector role.

For Alicea, who plans to become a licensed mental health counselor and probably move into private practice, that's a decade of career decisions shaped around a federal program over her own goals.

It's also worth noting that PSLF carries real risk. The program has faced administrative dysfunction and high denial rates throughout its history and ongoing legal uncertainty continues to affect repayment plan eligibility (8).