If you aren’t a student loan borrower, it may sound ridiculous that anyone would need advice keeping track of student loans. You owe money. You pay it off every month. Where’s the confusion?
But if you have been through the student loan gauntlet, you might have a mix of federal student loans and private loans, and you probably don’t have to pay some or all of them until after college. If you’re 17 or 18 years old when you get these loans, assuming you start paying them off after you have your degree and hopefully a job, if you haven’t been thinking about them, you could easily start mixing up in your mind what was a loan and what was a grant, and what loans your parents took out versus what you took out. It doesn’t help either that part of you would probably rather forget about the loans altogether.
If you’re struggling with how to make sense of it all, try the following strategies.
[See: 15 Financial Steps to Take Your First Year After Graduation.]
Go basic with a binder. That’s a suggestion from Crystal Olivarria, founder and CEO at CareerConversationalist.com. Based out of Clovis, California, she is a career coach for kids — she helps them decide what careers to focus on.
“The easiest way to keep track of student loans, grants and scholarships is to keep all the information in one place like in a binder. Clear plastic page protectors work well for keeping different accounts and awards separated,” she says.
Olivarria came to the binder idea during her own pre-college days, as she racked up scholarships and took out student loans.
“Originally, I kept everything stuffed in a large 8-by-11 inch envelope,” she says.
It was a mess inside the envelope, but on the plus side, at least the mess was contained. In any case, Olivarria had a lot to keep track of when she was collecting the funds to go to a private college in Oakland, California. She says her student loan debt totaled $23,500 — and she was awarded $71,332 in grants and scholarships.
So make sure to stay organized as your collect paperwork on your loans. And make sure you don’t lose the binder.
[See: 11 Tips for the Sandwich Generation: Paying for College and Retirement.]
Or go basic with a spreadsheet. You could use something like Microsoft Excel or Google Docs to keep track of your student loans. You’ll want to include information like the name of your lender, your interest rate and whether it’s fixed or variable (which means it could change at any moment) and your first payment date or the monthly payment date (if you’ve already started making payments). As long as you don’t forget that you created a spreadsheet with your student loan information (and keep it up to date), you’ll be all set to take another look and start making payments when the time comes.
Use a website to help you. As you might expect, there are some websites that can help you keep track of your student loans.
For instance, Student Loan Hero has a free dashboard that will let you keep track of your student loans.
You also will want to check out the National Student Loan Data System, or NSLDS. You’ll definitely want to use it if you have federal student loans, and especially if you have lost track of loans you’ve taken out. It’s a database that monitors how much federal student loan debt a student has. But it won’t tell you if you have private loans from somewhere, so it’s not a complete fail-safe.
“Tracking private student loans isn’t as easy,” says Michael Lux, an Indianapolis-based attorney who runs The Student Loan Sherpa, a student loan information website. “If you have lost track of your loans, one of the best places to start is your credit report.”
Not a bad idea. If you don’t want to wait to receive a letter in the mail telling you that you’ve missed the due date, and you have a late fee, review your credit report — you can get a free credit report by going to AnnualCreditReport.com. If you have private loans you took out a few years ago, you’ll surely see them on there.
Alert your lenders when you move. You may, of course, move around quite a bit during college, going from your parents’ home to a dorm room to a couple apartments, perhaps. It may sound like a pain in the neck, and, yes, it is, but it’s also important to ensure you don’t lose track of your loans.
“It’s the only way to ensure you get important notices,” Lux says. “Falling off your lender’s radar won’t get you out of having to pay off your loan. It will only serve to rack up extra interest, late fees and collection charges.”
Of course, you could just keep your parents’ home address as your main address for your lenders — and only worry about contacting your lenders if your parents move. In any case, Lux is right. You want to make it easy for your lenders to find you.
[See: 25 Ways to Fix Your Finances Fast.]
You could consolidate your loans. Unfortunately, you can only consolidate your federal student loans, and if you do that, it won’t lower your interest rate or save you any money. The main reason to consolidate is if you want to be more organized, and sometimes, in applying for a federal loan repayment program, you may be required to consolidate.
You also can’t combine your parents’ loans with yours, a common misconception.
In any case, there’s no right way or wrong way to keep track of your student loans, as long as whatever system you come up with works in paying your loans off on time. You can imagine the fun you’ll one day have if you lose complete track of who has lent you what and then move onto paying for graduate school or any other big expense.
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How to Keep Track of Your Student Loans originally appeared on usnews.com
