About Student Loan Repayment
Student debt's defining choice is payment-versus-total: the standard 10-year plan hurts monthly but minimizes interest; stretched terms breathe easier and cost thousands more. Seeing both numbers before picking — or before refinancing — is the whole game.
Enter your balance, rate, and candidate term for the payment, total repaid, and interest as a percent of principal. Run it at 10 and 20 years and the trade-off prices itself. Multiple loans? Run each — their rates differ, and that difference drives payoff order.
The same amortization engine, general-purpose, lives in the Loan Calculator.
The Standard-Plan Math
Fixed-payment amortization, the same formula behind mortgages:
Payment = P × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)⁻ⁿ) r = rate ÷ 1200 · n = months
Worked example: $30,000 at 5.5% on the standard 10-year plan → $325.58/month, repaying $39,069 total ($9,069 interest — 30% of principal). The same loan at 20 years: $206/month but $19,532 of interest — the payment relief costs $10,463.
Term Length vs Total Cost
$30,000 at 5.5% across the standard term menu (all computed by this calculator):
| Term | Monthly | Total interest | Interest vs principal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 years | $325.58 | $9,069 | 30% |
| 15 years | $245.11 | $14,120 | 47% |
| 20 years | $206.39 | $19,533 | 65% |
| 25 years | $184.23 | $25,268 | 84% |
The last column is the honest price tag of low payments: at 25 years, interest nearly equals the degree itself.
Levers That Shrink the Total
Extra payments attack principal directly — $50/month extra on the worked example's 10-year plan finishes ~19 months early and saves ~$1,600 (tell your servicer to apply extras to principal, not to advance the due date). Order matters with multiple loans: highest rate first, always, while paying minimums on the rest.
Refinancing trades federal protections for rate: private refis can cut interest meaningfully for strong credit, but federal loans surrender IDR eligibility, potential forgiveness programs, and hardship deferments the moment they're refinanced — irreversibly. The sequence that respects both: exhaust federal-specific advantages first, refinance only what doesn't need them, and never refinance federal loans while any forgiveness path realistically applies to you.