The stack of unopened envelopes on Marcus Dillard’s kitchen counter told me everything I needed to know before he said a single word. There were electric bills, a student loan servicer notice, and what looked like a credit card statement — all face-down, all ignored. Marcus, 34, teaches high school math at a Title I school in southwest Atlanta, and when he finally looked up from his coffee and smiled, I could see both the optimism and the exhaustion behind it.
I reached out to Marcus after a reader tip about teachers who don’t realize their public-sector jobs exist entirely outside the Social Security system. His story turned out to be more complicated — and more common — than I expected.
A Career Built on a System He Didn’t Know He Was Outside Of
Marcus has been teaching since 2018. He earned his master’s in education from Georgia State University, a degree he hoped would translate to better pay and more stability. Instead, it came with $62,000 in federal student loans and a salary that, after his wife Diane cut her hours following the birth of their second child, often felt like it wasn’t enough to cover the basics.
Like most Georgia public school teachers, Marcus is enrolled in the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia (TRS). He contributes 6% of his salary each pay period. What he did not know — until roughly six months ago — is that TRS participation means he pays nothing into Social Security. Not a dime.
“I honestly thought I was covered,” Marcus told me. “I see the deductions on my check and I assumed Social Security was in there somewhere. Nobody sat me down and explained that TRS and Social Security are two completely separate things.”
He isn’t alone in that assumption. According to the Social Security Administration, approximately 28% of state and local government workers in the United States — roughly 7.4 million people — are not covered by Social Security through their primary employment. Georgia is one of several states where public school teachers fall entirely outside the federal system.
The Moment the Gap Became Real
Marcus learned about his situation in September 2025, almost by accident. He had logged into the SSA’s My Social Security portal to look up a question for a personal finance unit he was developing for his eleventh graders. What he found stopped him cold.
His Social Security earnings record showed credits from a retail job he held in college and a summer landscaping gig in 2016 — and then nothing. Eight years of teaching, and the federal government’s retirement system had no record of him working at all during that time.
To qualify for any Social Security retirement benefit, a worker needs at least 40 credits — roughly 10 years of covered employment. Marcus currently has approximately 14 credits from his pre-teaching jobs, meaning he would need to accumulate 26 more through work outside of TRS-covered employment before he could draw any benefit at all. At his current trajectory, staying in teaching until retirement, he may never reach that threshold.
What the TRS Pension Actually Offers — and What It Doesn’t
The TRS of Georgia is, by most objective measures, a solid defined-benefit pension. A teacher who works 30 years and retires at 60 can expect a monthly benefit calculated at roughly 2% of their average final salary per year of service. For Marcus, if he stays the full course, that could mean a meaningful monthly check in retirement.
But Marcus isn’t sure he’ll stay the full course. The student loan pressure is real. Childcare for two children has cost the Dillard family between $1,800 and $2,200 per month depending on the school calendar. Diane’s reduced hours brought their household income down from approximately $98,000 to somewhere around $74,000 in 2024. They’ve been carrying credit card balances — never more than a few thousand dollars, but never zero either.
“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about leaving teaching,” Marcus told me, leaning forward over the kitchen table. “The private sector would pay me more and I’d at least be building something with Social Security. But I love what I do. I love my kids — the ones at school. I don’t know how you put a number on that.”
That tension — between purpose and practical financial security — is something I’ve heard from several public-sector workers over the past year. For Marcus, it’s amplified by the student debt. He borrowed the $62,000 to pursue a career in education, and that career is now the very thing complicating his long-term financial picture.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness: The Program Marcus Didn’t Know He Might Qualify For
This is where Marcus’s story takes a turn that surprised him more than it surprised me. During our conversation, I asked whether he had looked into the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF). His expression shifted.
“I’ve heard of it,” he said slowly. “But I figured it was one of those things that sounds good and then falls apart when you actually try to use it.” His skepticism is understandable — PSLF had a notoriously low approval rate in its early years, with some reports citing rejection rates above 98% before program reforms in 2021 and 2022. The Biden administration’s waiver programs and updated processing rules significantly improved that picture, though the program’s future has faced continued political uncertainty under the current administration.
The core requirements for PSLF, as of early 2026, include working full-time for a qualifying employer (which public schools generally are), making 120 qualifying payments under an income-driven repayment plan, and holding Direct Loans. Marcus entered repayment in 2017. If his loans qualify and his payments have been properly documented, he may be closer to forgiveness than he realized.
When I walked through that timeline with him, Marcus went quiet. “Eight years of payments,” he said. “I might have already done most of it and I didn’t even know.”
The Unresolved Weight of Not Knowing
What struck me most about my time with Marcus wasn’t any single revelation — it was the cumulative weight of financial information he had simply never received. He grew up in a household, he told me, where money was a source of stress and silence in equal measure. His parents didn’t talk about retirement accounts or pension vesting schedules or federal loan programs. Those weren’t dinner table conversations.
“I got a master’s degree,” he said, and there was something genuinely rueful in his voice. “I teach other people’s kids how to think in numbers. And I didn’t even know what was on my own Social Security statement.”
As of March 2026, Marcus has not yet submitted his PSLF Employment Certification Forms — he said he was waiting to get documentation from his school district’s HR department. His Social Security gap remains unresolved. The credit card balance sits at around $3,400. The envelopes on the counter, he admitted when I pointed at them, were still mostly unread.
He knows what he needs to do. That’s the particular kind of anxiety he described — not ignorance, but avoidance. “I open one thing and it leads to five more things,” he said. “And I’ve got papers to grade and a two-year-old who won’t sleep. So I tell myself I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, for Marcus Dillard, keeps being today. His story isn’t one of crisis averted or problem solved — not yet. It’s the story of a generation of public-sector workers who entered careers of genuine service and quietly accumulated vulnerabilities that nobody ever walked them through. The Social Security gap he’s sitting in was built by policy, not neglect. Whether it closes for him depends on choices — and paperwork — still ahead.
Related: Claiming Social Security at 62 Feels Smart Until You See What It Actually Costs You Over 20 Years
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