Are these subsidized loans where the interest is paid by the government while you are attending school? Then you are not loosing out on any $$ yet. If interest is already being added to your principle while in school (unsubsidized loans) then you have the option to make interest payments while in school to counter compounding interest. It is quite possible you will be offered a mixture of both these types of federal loans per semester/year.
First of all, you are the borrower. Great Lakes is your student loan servicing agent. The agent manages the loan accounts and collection of payments as a service to you, the government and the lender. Your lender is less important as you won't have much direct contact with them. You could have several lenders behind the scene and they may change as your loans are traded between lenders. You can check all federal financial aid loan information with the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) http://www.nslds.ed.gov/nslds_SA/
Federal loans have many repayment plan options: standard, extended, graduated and income based repayment plans offer a variety of monthly minimum payment amounts while, some lower than others if needed while you begin your career and can only afford small payments. Deferment and forbearance options are great to have incase you are unable to pay for a short period of time and need to postpone repayment.
So far, you have taken out $2500 in loans. For this, you are looking at a $25-50 monthly payment depending on the repayment plan. If you stopped now, you could pay this debt of with $100 monthly payments in less than 2.5 years and pay a nominal amount in interest of a few hundred dollars. This is not much to worry about.
Positive student loan accounts can greatly boost your credit reports & scores. They are installment loans and will remain on reports for up to 10 years after they are paid off. This is great for several things: average age of accounts, number of positive accounts, positive payment history, good mixture of credit, etc.
All that being said, the main thing you need to watch out for is who, what and how much. You always want to know the following and make sure you have not let a loan go unattended to because you were not paying attention.
- What - what kinds of loans did I take out? Are they federal or private?
- Who - who is the servicing agency for each loan account. Do my statements from this agency show all the loans it is supposed to? Does each loan appear under my account when I log into their website? Does this match what is showing in the NSLDS? Do the loan statuses in the NSLDS match what is the servicing agency says?
- How much - Monitor the total SL loans you take out. You can easily predict the cost of and loans necessary for different educations and plan out using loan calculator what your monthly payments and total interest will be for each education. What is it the education and career path worth to you?
Not to bust you our your mom's bubble, but six figure incomes are not as common as people think, less than 5% of individual's incomes in the usa are over $100k. Starting out in a community college is a good decision. Spend the next few years trying out your options. Choose what you want and like to do, then make the commitment and do it extremely well.
