So I logged in to check my federal student loan balance yesterday. Here’s what it looked like:
My heart skipped a beat.
The next payment due: $0. Current amount due: $0.
My mind jumped to the only logical conclusion: Did some rich benefactor swoop in and pay off my student loan debt?!
Then my eyes glanced over to the right of the report.
Last Payment: $7,732.76
Did I accidentally make a $7,732.76 student loan payment?!
Oh. No. I certainly don’t have thousands of dollars sitting in my checking account. I must have accidentally signed up to pay the entire balance! I was freaking out. (See my reaction below.)
Turns out, the feds sold my loan to a private company. But they didn’t bother to tell me that on the website. What looked to me like my loans had disappeared was really just a balance transfer. Don’t toy with me like that, Department of Education!
I guess I didn’t make a $7,732.76 payment (good news), and I still owe them thousands of dollars (not so good news). At least now I know what it feels like to be debt free, even if just for a second 🙂
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Well, it could be worse. We just got a bill in the mail this week telling us that my wife’s student loan payments were past due, and that a letter had been sent to the cosigners (her parents). Turns out, the loans are on a graduated payment plan, and the payment went up. They just never actually told us that they went up.
Wow! Yikes. There’s nothing more frustrating than being uninformed about changes someone else made to your finances!
That’s crazy. Do you have to register to a new site or will it be transparent to you? The mortgage companies do this all the time but in my case I’ve been with Citi, and they still service the loan, so I contact them, log in to their website, keep the same account number, etc.
They rolled over my automatic payments, but I have to sign into a separate site to track my loan. How is this legal? 😛
The same exact thing happened to my boyfriend. He did ultimately receive notification by mail (way after the fact) and when he managed to get a hold of someone by phone, they fully acknowledged that they weren’t planning on telling anyone until after the transfer.
That’s so scammy!
Student loans for me have been a nightmare. My school deposited $21,000 in my account that I never signed for, wanted or asked to be dispersed. Oh, did I mention it was accruing interests and fees in the 2 weeks we battled it out?
The loan company wanted the money back, the school insisted it was my fault then both the school and the loan company wanted the money sent back to them (and it took me an hour pleading with the loan officer and the bursar’s office to talk to EACH OTHER instead of making me a middle man.) and after about 5 hours of customer service calls and a closed account (that meant I couldn’t return the money but had to return, uh, what?) It finally got cleared up.
I will be darn happy when my loans are at 0! I do auto payments each month and put down a big payment last month, but I have some time. We should meet for drinks to celebrate being student loan free some day!
It’s a date – whoever is loan-free buys a round 🙂
It looks like to took a screen shot of my computer last week, lol. Same thing happened to me, federal loans sold off to a private company. That makes me worry a little, because they may have different term & conditions, so I have some legal jargon reading to do. My heart did leap for a second as well. Bummer that it’s not actually paid for 😉
You going to have those paid off this year?
At least you didn’t mess up and sign-up to pay the balance. 🙂