Student loan debt has become the $1.6 trillion elephant in the room, and it’s affecting the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

It would seem that every few weeks more sobering statistics about student debt come out. But how is this economic phenomenon affecting the day-to-day lives of millennial college grads?

Student loan debt has its ways of keeping people down. The simple presence of such a huge form of debt, first of all, has become the biggest barrier to home ownership for millennials. If you notice kids leaving the homes on your street later into their 20s, or even 30s, then this is one of the most plausible reasons. According to a study by LendingTree, student loan debt is causing millennials to miss opportunities for travel, move homes, and change careers or start a family. The study found that 46% of respondents regretted how much money they borrowed, and 46% also regretted what they studied in college.

While not all college grads are in a particularly bad financial spot right now, nearly 78% of recent graduates said their student loan debt limits their life, according to the LendingTree study. When it comes to the expenses that people are cutting to make up for their student loan debt, 44% said that they are cutting travel, with 31% saying they’re holding off on saving for retirement to pay off their debt. Furthermore, 46% of recent grads currently have a student loan balance that exceeds their salary, while only 51% have a salary that is larger than their debt.

The restrictions that college grads in the US are placing on their financial lives are affecting everything in the US from demographics to GDP to charity. 18% of respondents to the survey reported not donating to charity in order to save for student loan payments. Other areas where recent grads are cutting costs include going out with friends, investing, moving, changing jobs, going back to school, starting a business, and having a baby.