Student loans are the financial equivalent of a terms-of-service agreement. You agreed to them. You definitely didn’t read them.

The average borrower graduates with $37,000 in federal student loan debt and lands on the Standard 10-Year Plan by default.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that. But the Standard plan is designed for someone with stable income from day one. If that's not you, there are better options. Most people just have no idea they exist.

I created a tool called Cense Loan Lab for this problem. Answer five questions, loan type, balance, interest rate, income, employer, and priorities, and it spits out a plain-English comparison of every federal repayment plan: Standard, Graduated, IBR, SAVE, and PSLF.

The tool explains each plan as you go, flags the legal status of SAVE (currently paused in courts), and ends with direct links to take action on studentaid.gov.

Because this tool is meant to help you take an informed next step. Not overwhelm you.

If you have federal student loans and have never logged into studentaid.gov to check your repayment plan, this is your sign. There's a real chance your monthly payment could be lower (sometimes significantly) or that your job qualifies you for full loan forgiveness you didn't know you were building toward.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have questions or want the tool to be improved!

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