HN Request: A way to manage student loans. | Hacker News Reader

HN Request: A way to manage student loans.

18 pointsmattblalock22 comments

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.

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.

tl;dr - I can't manage my 12 student loans, suggestions?

What do you think HN? Someone already doing it? Anybody interested in something like this?

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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...

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.

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?

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.

Do you think it will hurt you to shop around a bit?

I mean there's no free lunch - a consolidation loan might cost you more than sorting the mess out on your own, but (no insult intend, please don't take it so) - you probably wouldn't be in this position if you had the correct set of financial practices in place to avoid it in the first place.

Consolidation loans exist exactly to profit from this type of situation - and people are more likely to pay a single loan than they are one out of a dozen. A pile of loans is big weight to carry - a big mental burden. A single loan to get out of debt is still a burden, but it has a purpose and can be more manageable, and still profitable for those lending.

Can't hurt to ask, right?

Thats basically how I feel...

I would like to do that, but having a tool that allowed me to do that would be epic.

I like your use of cognitive load, because that's literally what this post is about... I want to stop thinking about them...

I hadn't thought of consolidating the loans, but that seems like something worth considering! Thank you for the advice!

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

> 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.

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.

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).

Sure, a spreadsheet might make it easy to see that I have 12 loans. But does it make it any easier to pay and monitor 12 individual loans? Nah.

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

"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?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mint.com will solve the balance and payment issue.

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.

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

I'd say many lenders already are.

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