Pulling together one dollar a month extra (204 dollars total over the life of the loan) and paying it to principal saves me 2 months of payoff, netting a $710.13 savings. Just for squeezing out four quarters a month. Noodling up an extra 50 bucks a month makes a huge difference. I intend to pay this off by September 1, 2008 and the journey so far has been intense. But even if I don’t make it, I will be leaps ahead, and will save thousands of dollars for the effort. Makes doing without take out coffee, selling off old textbooks, and scrounging change worth it.

Check out her site for information on calculators and the decreased life of her loan based on even 1 dollar more per month.

Micropay Your Way To Student Loan Freedom

A recent follow up on Micropayments to Sallie Mae

This is great and all however, 1 million won’t put many students through school without leaving a gap which will need to be made up for with loans, and who will be there to rob these kids blind with thier uncaring enterprise funded by your tax dollars? Sallie Mae will! 1 million is a lot for myself and for most of you, however when you pay your CEO 3.3 million I would think you could scrap up a few more dollars to endow a program in Texas. The problem is the more Sallie Mae covers the less students need toborrow from them. Essentially this “donation” is advertising with a Tax Break.

Nice try Sallie, but too little…too late!

Good Advice and Humor:

“Don’t be short-sighted. Consolidating your student loans will lengthen your repayment term, creating a long-term relationship with your lender, so it’s important to also consider lenders that can offer flexible repayment options, life-of-loan servicing, and a single point of contact,” says Scherschel.

Good

• Warning students about bad lenders
• Noting that a consolidation lengthens the payment period

Bad

• Sallie Mae is as flexible as an arthritic osteoporothis ridden old man.
• Sallie Mae will provide life of loan servicing, they will have your loan until you die.
• Sallie Mae cannot provide a single point of contact, each call no matter if it is your 1st or 50th regarding the same problem nets you another person with no vested interest in solving your problem.  From our experience it is ussualy someone who has half a grasp on the english language as well, which doesn’t work when your job is to deal with angry english speaking student loan borrowers.

Sallie Mae Cautions Students about Lender Practices, Irony not Lost

The rep (female no name recorded) just told my wife we cannot consolidate to Wells Fargo, the same rep told her before this that they had already sent the payoff letter.

Time to get back on the phone.

My Call records for the night.

Wed mar 14th 6:05
Caller: Shawn
ID:

No Restrictions on who you can consolidate loans to.

6:08 Transfer to Consolidation Dept

Caller: Renee

6:11 Transfer to Private Consolidation

loop of Voice Menus at Whisper Volume

6:14
Caller: Katie

“No idea”

6:19
1888-272-5543
Caller: Matt

Transfer to Consolidation Specialist

6:21
Caller: Mellisa

Consolidations to Federal Loans

You should be able to consolidate away.

Need to talk to a supervisor, in main department. Call in the morning because the Supervisors all go home earlier in the day.

6:31
Amber Goes back to the phone with the mission of getting a payoff amount and giving me permission to speak to Sallie Mae on her behalf.

Caller: Nadia

Transferred to Private Dept.

Caller: Ben or Bet Alfred

Sallie Mae cannot send a payoff amount to Wells Fargo because of Privacy issues.

Sallie Mae also has no ability to note on an account that another person may speak on behalf of the loan holder, according to Alfred.

Alfred was able to tell my wife her payoff amounts and promised to send a letter to her.

That ends the phone calls for tonite, tommorow I need to try to speak to a supervisor, as well as reach someone who can actualy do something at Sallie Mae, Bonus Points for grasping the English Language.

So now we have to do the dance between companies to get this money transferred.  If anyone out there is an attourney looking to sue Sallie Mae drop me a line.

Sallie Mae – Student Loans 888-272-5543 Don’t speak or enter anything and you will be transferred to an agent.
Sallie Mae 888-272-5543 Press 00 at each prompt.

Via GetHuman

I feel your pain in dealing with slm.In Nov my wife and I filed chapter 7.We did not file on my slm loan since me and my lawyer thought that I could not file on a student loan  (WRONG).Just so happens that the career loan I had you can file on.So when they got the notice that I had filed they put the loan in my dads name.they never called me once.

Then they lost my Nov payment.They called my mom and dad at least four times a day.I had to fax them my bank statement four times.It took them a month and a half to find it.

They were also going to send me forms to fill out so that I could re-affirm the loan in around the first week of Nov.When did I get them?  End of Dec..They said to sign it and have my lawyer sign them and fax it back to them and they would file the papers.Three weeks later after hearing nothing I called and was told that NO we don’t file you have to.So after spending almost three months now trying to get the loan back in my name now they are saying since my chap 7 case is now closed that they can’t put it back in my name.

I’m going to fire off a letter to Mr.Fitzpatrick about this so he will  know how much I think SLM is nothing more than a bunch of low life crocks.

Thanks for sharing, I only hope our voice gets large enought o be noticed.

Thomas Fitzpatrick,

This letter is in response to my wife’s federal loans which your company is currently holding. These three loans are part of a group of loans which we had filed for consolidation in October 2005 and included all of our federal loans. The consolidation went through and payments were dispersed in late December. At some point in this process Sallie Mae became the new holder of three of my wife’s loans. Since these were not consolidated we filed the additional paperwork to add these three loans to the consolidation. The paperwork was received by AES (American Education Services) the company we are consolidating to on February 1, 2006. AES has since sent several requests both via fax and the USPS. I have spoken with both Sallie Mae and AES customer service reps numerous times over the past year and I am still awaiting resolution. This is why I am writing you, as well as the CEO of American Education Services, my state Attorney General, the local Better Business Bureau and my state congressman.

What I want from you as the head of Sallie Mae is to make the necessary connections with American Education services to get these three student loans consolidated away from your company. My wife’s account number with Sallie Mae is ##########, and her Name is Amber Smith . I expect to hear from you or an assistant of yours by March 9th, 2007 regarding this matter. I also expect to have the loans transferred to American Education Services or completely forgiven by April 13th 2007.

You can view more about this process at http://www.imjosh.com/salliemae.

Sincerely,

Josh and Amber Smith

salliemaeblog@gmail.com

Sallie Mae Chair sells 18 million in stock before congressional ruling