It's that time of year: students who graduated this spring are about to start paying back their federal student loan bills. To pick the best repayment plan, you have to think about a lot of things — including the field you're working in and how you expect your salary to change in the next 10 years.
A great place to start is the Education Department's repayment estimator. This pulls in information on your student loans to tell you what your payment will be under different plans. But it doesn't tell you how the career you pursue might affect those payments in the long run. Here are a few of the things you should be considering, and how they might affect what plan is best for you. (You can reload the page at any point to restart the tool or choose another option.)
If you want to repay your loans on any plan that isn't the 10-year standard plan, you'll have to contact your loan servicer. And these plans only work for federal student loans, not private loans issued by banks or financial institutions.
Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?
Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.
Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. We can’t do that if we have a paywall.
That’s why we also turn to you, our readers, to help us keep Vox free. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today?
Yes, I'll give $5/month
Yes, I'll give $5/month
We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and
Google Pay. You can also contribute via