Student loan debt in the U.S. grew by more than $2,000 every second and has now topped $1.3 trillion overall.

Yahoo News also reports Generation X borrowers, described as those between 35 and 50, now owe as much on their loan repayments as new grads, despite years of making repayments. Overall, student loan repayments in many of those homes are now surpassing groceries as the biggest monthly expenditure.

Back in December, the Obama administration announced the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan, which allows some federal student loan borrowers to cap their monthly payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income. But with some media outlets recently reporting that more than one in four student loan borrowers are now graduating with "excessive" debt, even that may not be enough to meaningfully stem the tide.

An Associated Press study further uncovered all the mounting debt has resulted in a cycle where loan repayment obligations now span multiple generations within families.

The study also found more and more school loans now belong to Americans past the age of 40, with that group now owning 35 percent of all debt compared to 25 percent a little more than a decade ago. Estimates are that average debt per student now calculates to about $20,000.

In all, roughly six million Gen X households still owe debt, with some borrowers being so strapped they have been forced to move to more remote areas of the country were various loan forgiveness programs are on the books.

"We've never had a historical era where so much debt was taken out at an early age," said Diana Elliott, research manager for financial security and mobility at Pew.

Exacerbating the situation all the more is the fact that as debt has spiraled, wages have largely stagnated. Still, many Gen X-ers have felt the tug to return to grad school in hopes of improving their earning prospects at a time when the overall economy has become more unpredictable.

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