finally looked into my federal student aid stuff… kinda wish I did this sooner

I’ve had about ~$35k in federal student aid loans since graduating in 2019 and honestly I’ve just been… avoiding it. Like I’d make payments, but I never really looked into whether I was on the right plan or if anything changed. Every time I logged into the federal site I’d get overwhelmed and just close the tab.

A couple weeks ago I forced myself to actually sit down and figure it out because my payments felt way too high for what I make now. I tried using the official federal student aid site but kept getting confused jumping between repayment plans and calculators. Eventually I found this tool that basically broke everything down in a way that actually made sense and showed what I might qualify for. Turns out I should’ve been on an income-driven plan a long time ago… my monthly dropped a pretty noticeable amount.

Not saying this fixes everything, but it made things way less confusing for me. I’ll drop the link I used in the comments in case anyone else has been putting this off like I was.