Earnest offered by Navient? - hold on a minute here

[Anonymous]

When I requested my bills for the length of my loan, they immediately sent me the bills while I was with FLS. The rest were in the warehouse they said and it could take up to 180 days to find them. A few months later they let me know that they weren't there, and neither was my promissory note. I guess when my old servicer went out of business they didn't pass anything on. 😡
So I set up a spreadsheet and had it auto-calculate the monthly difference, instated the number of days, and had it auto-calculate the interest rate. It took a bit of time to set it up and input the data but it was really worth it. The rates were way off! And they changed from month to month sometimes. I think it's such a small amount that people don't notice the difference and they get away with it. And the interest subsidy for my subsidized loans that should have been paid by the government for the first 3 years on REPAYE was no where to be seen.
I'm glad you're deciding to do this. I think anyone paying off their loan will find it will probably save them money.

[calyx]

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@Anonymous wrote:
When I requested my bills for the length of my loan, they immediately sent me the bills while I was with FLS. The rest were in the warehouse they said and it could take up to 180 days to find them. A few months later they let me know that they weren't there, and neither was my promissory note. I guess when my old servicer went out of business they didn't pass anything on. 😡
So I set up a spreadsheet and had it auto-calculate the monthly difference, instated the number of days, and had it auto-calculate the interest rate. It took a bit of time to set it up and input the data but it was really worth it. The rates were way off! And they changed from month to month sometimes. I think it's such a small amount that people don't notice the difference and they get away with it. And the interest subsidy for my subsidized loans that should have been paid by the government for the first 3 years on REPAYE was no where to be seen.
I'm glad you're deciding to do this. I think anyone paying off their loan will find it will probably save them money.

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You're making me appreciate Cornerstone (gasp!).   Everything is very transparent with them so far, and my spreadsheets match their information exactly.   And when we had our "mishap" they back dated my payment so that I didn't even eat extra interest.

[Anonymous]

Navient said they couldn't provide that info. I should probably do a written request. The CSR seemed confused by the request. She just kept saying interest accrued daily and she was sending a letter explaining how it worked.

[Anonymous]

Calyx: Then maybe you're one of the "lucky" ones with them. They definitely have some of the same issues:
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/20558/cornerstone-student-loan-servicing-problems/
Even with FLS, a few borrowers time the they have a perfect history with them. If only it were do all the time with everybody. Although fun what you're saying and who I read the top offenders are, I believe Cornerstone isn't as bad as others.
TylerDurden17: Yes, they can. They can provide the bill for the loan (or pre-consilidation, each loan) and the interest rate should be on there. If it's like FedLoan, the first CS person can be useless. It's better to talk with the account specialists it fax/ mail the request until you get an answer. From your dates, don't will likely be available electronically and the rest they can mail it to you.
Interest does accrue daily. That's why I had a row with the interest rate as well. If you have a row with the interest rate, a row with the number of days in the month and a row with the balance for the month you can match it up with the interest actually accrued.
Because you know the balance for each month, you can create an equation to determine the daily interest rate based on the basic difference taking into account any payments and the number of days in the billing cycle. This number them gets multipled by the number of days in a year, 365, to get the APR. The APR should match either your bill or the amount it should be with interest subsidies taken into account.

[calyx]

LOL - trust me, I'm not about to tell everyone Cornerstone is the greatest, because they're definitely not, but I can say they've not been too bad for me in the year I've used them.
To be fair, I'm probably a little better versed with the system than many people, so I'm probably an outlier.

I will say that their website has improve miles in the last few months (transparency with payments and interest are nice).  But I do still have to get data from the NSLDS that I feel Cornerstone should provide (but is not immediately necessary).   When I first started using them, their website was useless and an utter nightmare.  It was like finding a GeoCities throwback from the late 90s.

Edited to add:  I think most most accurate statement I can make about Cornerstone is that I don't hate them. 

[Anonymous]

I know that you've also gotten more than your share of wrong from other servicers, so you earned a break with Cornerstone. 😁
Is this the same spreadsheet you created to find out when your loan would be paid off? Have you ever seen a breakdown of which portion is subsidized and which isn't?

[Anonymous]

😂😂😂 not hating them is definitely good!

[calyx]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I know that you've also gotten more than your share of wrong from other servicers, so you earned a break with Cornerstone. 😁
Is this the same spreadsheet you created to find out when your loan would be paid off? Have you ever seen a breakdown of which portion is subsidized and which isn't?

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Yup! Same spreadsheet!   And I calculate ahead on mine and see if cornerstone matches, and so far it's been good.

And as for their site - every payment I've ever made, I can check it and break it out into subsidized, unsubsized - all payments, and different filters, so I can even look at just the sub or unsub loan.

This is the basic view of a payment (no sorting, etc) if I click on a payment:

[Anonymous]

On the private loan side of things I have experience with both Navient and Earnest. Hated Navient, love Earnest.
My private loans were bought by Navient. They had variable interest rates that Navient would hike up every month. I was probably 4 years into 20 year loans at this time with interest rates that started about 4-5% and were now 10-12%!!
Desperately I was looking to refinance my private loans (~$46,000), but no one would give me a chance because I'm single and my personal income is $38,000. Enter Earnest. Earnest takes into account not only your income, but your liquid assets. Thanks to that I was able to refinance and consolidate without a cosigner and have a fixed rate of 5.5%. I have had zero problems with Earnest and have had them for 10 months. I saw that they were owned by Navient when I refinanced, but on their website it says the new ownership will bring no change for Earnest clients.