MyFedLoan.org: The federal government is the lender, but federal loans have servicers as go-betweens between the government and you, the student. FedLoan is one of those servicers. These types of services make the borrowing process much less confusing.

Their website is excellent and easy to navigate. It is painless to view your account balance, summary, and other details. You can make payments quickly and easily online, as well as set up payments in advance and view your payment history.

You might not even know what types of loans you have. When you sign in to your account you will see a list of all your loans with details including the type of loan, balance, interest rate, etc. It is all very comprehensive and user-friendly.

If you can’t make your payments, you can get help with this. Making payments, even if they are not the full amount, is always better than just avoiding and missing a payment. Missed payments show up negatively on your credit. Attempts to work out making payments show that you take your loans seriously and lenders see this. Read more …

FedLoan Servicing Student Loan Company

FedLoan definitely makes it easy for you to pay your bills. You can pay online, by direct debit, by smart phone, by phone, or by mail. The site also gives you advice about how to pay ahead, payoff your loan entirely, or work out options if you have trouble making your payments.

You can use the online calculators to see the way payments affect your loan. Making payments during the grace period of your loan can affect the life of your loan because you won’t get compounded interest and have to pay interest on interest. The Grace Period Calculator will show you how powerful this can be. The Interest Savings Calculator essentially does the same thing and shows you the difference interest payments can make to your loan.

Tax information is available and easily accessible. You can even view previous years.

You will find links to forms you might need, such as payment related forms, deferment forms, forbearance forms, forgiveness and discharge forms, and account authorization forms, for if you want a third party to be allowed to discuss details of your account with the service provider.

If you are considering loan consolidation, FedLoan gives advice about that too. Consolidation might be something to consider if:

• You have quite a bit of student debt.

• You have a number of loans and different service providers.

• You have more than one kind of federal loan.

• You want to change from a variable to a fixed interest rate.

• Your monthly loan payments are more than you can handle, and you would like to consolidate to lower your payment.

The good things about loan consolidation are that it simplifies your life by giving you only one bill to deal with. Potentially, you can lower your monthly payment, either by lengthening the term of your loan or by getting a better interest rate. Loan forgiveness is definitely something to look into if you work in Public Service as well.

The down-side to consolidation is that if you opt for a longer repayment term, although your payments will be smaller and easier to handle, they will go on for longer and you will end up paying way more interest. Sometimes you also lose incentives by changing your loan, which is another thing to consider.