

HN Request: A way to manage student loans. - mattblalock

I like many other people accepted student loans in college, lots of them, about 12... total isn't much over $25k but, but managing them is a nightmare. I think every one of them is now with a different lender, despite them all originally being from Wachovia... many of them have old addresses and contact information, some are managed by the Dept. of Education, but I pay other companies, some send bills, some don't.<p>I have no clue what's paid, what isn't, and how much is owed. I don't know my options, the ways of paying, or anything... why isn't anyone taking advantage of the millions of student debtors? The service is needed, has opportunities for valuable service promotion and referrals for revenue.<p>tl;dr - I can't manage my 12 student loans, suggestions?<p>What do you think HN? Someone already doing it? Anybody interested in something like this?
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patio11
Consolidate your student loans into one loan. This is pretty easy -- you can
do it online in a few hours. Companies used to throw themselves at students to
get their consolidation business since it is practically risk-free (subsidized
up the wazoo and nondischargeable in bankruptcy to boot).

[https://loanconsolidation.ed.gov/AppEntry/apply-
online/appin...](https://loanconsolidation.ed.gov/AppEntry/apply-
online/appindex.jsp)

If you do this through a bank, they may do some of the legwork to rope
together your loans for you. (If your bank has a student loan group which does
this routinely, your permission and SSN make this a ten minute job for a
junior employee, and since your business is worth a few thousand bucks they're
happy to do it to get you in the door.)

The other option for decreasing cognitive load is accelerating repayment. I
got out of debt seven years ahead of schedule. It was economically suboptimal
at the interest rates I was being charged, but the sleep it saved was worth
every penny of opportunity cost.

~~~
bherms
I have about $90,000 in student loans and credit cards and I am struggling to
deal with it all. Even with several of these in default status (slowly working
on setting up payments here and there), do you think anyone would risk giving
me a consolidation loan?

~~~
patio11
Cure the defaults first. The answer is "Yes, but it will be harder."

Remember: there is no risk in giving you a consolidation loan. Heads they get
money from you, tails they get money from Uncle Sam.

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beoba
Given that you've got an average loan balance of only around $2000 across
those loans, how quickly would you be able to knock out some of the smaller
ones and bring down that loan count? It's generally best to start on the
highest interest loans first, but sometimes its more emotionally gratifying to
have the visible progress of loans getting paid off.

As for consolidation, it depends on a few factors. A lower interest rate in
the new loan is certainly good, but that benefit is limited if the
consolidation will result in fees, or if you plan to have the loans paid off
quickly (which I recommend if at all possible). In any case, always be careful
about the small print, _especially_ when it comes to private student loans,
which are NOT all alike and are notoriously prone to pitfalls and gotchas
(hooray banks).

You mentioned having loans managed by the Department of Education. I'm
assuming those are Direct Loans (<http://dl.ed.gov>), which should all be
accessible via the same interface. If you log in there and check your loan
balances, they might also have a link to view the balances of other federal
loans (eg Perkins) which are not necessarily handled by Direct Loans. I
haven't visited the site since I paid off my loans but I remember it tracking
the balance on my one non-Direct loan (albeit with some delay).

For financial advice in general, I'd recommend looking at the Bogleheads
Forums, which are primarily about investing but also have a lot of great
information and advice on personal finance: <http://bogleheads.org/forum>

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anamax
> I can't manage my 12 student loans, suggestions?

This is a one-time data-entry problem.

Enter the details into quicken.

You may need to ask each for a statement of accounts.

The only way that a service can help is if it has access to the relevant
records.

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vyrotek
I have many loans too (a mix of Federal and private). But, I managed to get
everything through salliemae.com. Its almost like consolidating without
consolidating. I make one payment to them a month and a little goes to
everyone. I'm not sure if you can move other loans to them or not.

Have you thought about consolidating all the Federal ones and the Privates
ones so you only have 2 payments to keep track of? Unfortunately I don't
believe you can mix both together.

If that isn't an option, then Mint.com also allows you to add different kids
of loans and track them. I actually do this now because I find their
historical charts and tools a bit more useful than what Salliemae offers.

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mgkimsal
Spreadsheet?

While there's possibly a market there, I wouldn't be too geeked about trying
to build a service to profit off of the debt of others. But there are some
services out there targetting credit card debtors - a student loan is just
another account with a balance, no? (yes, different legal rights may apply,
but from a math and organization standpoint, it's the same).

~~~
mattblalock
I don't want to make anything. But there are lots of people like me with
disorganized and confusing student loans...

~~~
mgkimsal
"I don't want to make anything"

Not sure what you meant by that. Make a service? Make money?

You seemed to be suggesting this was a market that needs a service to help
people get less disorganized. There are loads of free debt calculators that
will show you that by adding $X/month to a payment you'll be out of debt Y
months earlier. There's no real magic or rocket science to this.

Having a service that visualized all of it might be a bit motivational for
some people, but doing anything that speaks to student loans is going to
require work. Which is going to requirement payment, meaning the service would
need to charge money or show ads. Neither of those sit well with me with
respect to the audience - they're already self-identifying as being in debt -
sometimes massively. It just doesn't feel like a good market to try to make
money from.

It sounds like you're looking for something that can automatically send
payments on your behalf, check that they were received, and suggest when to
send extra payments. Or was there something else?

~~~
mattblalock
"something that can automatically send payments on your behalf, check that
they were received, and suggest when to send extra payments"

Yes. Why not make money? So long as the revenue doesn't come from the debtor,
who gives? Sure they have debt, but I mean... I still have plenty of money, a
job, etc.

It's not like we're talking about making money from homeless and staving
babies.

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kayhi
Take an inventory of the loans, rates and payment amounts to get a handle on
your situation. How much in total do you need to set aside each month? When
will the debts be paid in full?

Consolidating is a good option considering the low interest rate environment
at the moment. Keep an eye out for fees, if you are aggressive about paying
off your loans then it may not be worthwhile. Alternatively, you should be
able to set up auto payments from each provider to deduct from a bank account.

~~~
mattblalock
I don't want to lose any flexibility in repayment, thank you for pointing that
out. I'll keep my eyes peeled for fees and such.

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iworkforthem
Suggestion: Before taking a loan, always explore if a scholarship is a
possibility. If your result is pretty decent, most companies or community are
more than willingly to give you a scholarship.

~~~
mattblalock
Oh I did. I went to a private college, $45k a year, and took out 6 $2,500
federal loans and at least another loan per semester - the rest was definitely
scholarship.

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adam0101
Mint.com will solve the balance and payment issue.

~~~
mattblalock
No it doesn't. It will solve the, look I have loans, issue. I have some of
them in Mint, but the problem is that they keep being bought out! Not that I
can't read... they move around, change owners, and I dunno who to send money.

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mgkimsal
"why isn't anyone taking advantage of the millions of student debtors?"

I'd say many lenders already are.

