HELP! Dealing with Student Debt Head On After Years of Neglect (260K) - Organization and Options (x-post w/ r/personalfinance)

What do you mean by titled differently? I don't disagree that it can be confusing - just trying to figure out what exactly you're unclear on. I spent a few years working for one of the federal student loan servicers and am now a financial aid coordinator, so I'm glad to explain whatever I can :)

Quick crash course on federal loan types: The older federal loan program was FFELP (something about family; don't remember the exact name and it's not really relevant). Obama dismantled that several years ago, and all new loans are now through the Direct Loan program. Only the loans that say "Direct" in front of them are through the Direct Loan program; the rest are automatically FFELP.

I'm thinking that loan #11 (the Stafford Subsidized) was consolidated into loan #10 - so it wasn't actually paid off, but rolled into another loan. FFELP Loans are a little wacky, so I'm not sure why that would've happened.

NSLDS does only show federal loans. Loans 1, 3, and 4 for ECMC seem to correspond with loans 10, 8, and 7 respectively.

If there's any chance of you doing PSLF, you'll want to consolidate certain loans right away. The loans have to be Direct Loans to qualify, but you can consolidate loans into Direct Loans (yeah, it sounds confusing). This means you'd want to consolidate 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 from NSLDS.

Before you do that, though, I'd work on rehabbing your loans. That tends to reduce the collections fees that are tacked on, and will [slightly] improve your credit.

If you have loans on your credit report that don't match anything in NSLDS, then they're most likely private loans. Sallie Mae's tricky because they service both federal and private loans, and originated (basically lent) federally backed loans 5-10 years ago. Anything on NSLDS is definitely federal (Department of Education), though.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on with ECMC, though I can warrant a guess - they used to service FFELP loans years ago. I'm guessing that they were your servicer for those at one point, but the loans were then transferred to Navient. The Department of Education started a push to get loans with one servicer about 1-2 years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was what happened. It does have Navient listed as the contact, so at least they're not truly double listed.

If you have more questions, feel free to holler! I'll explain whatever I can. Also, since I know sometimes an immediate back & forth with questions is easier, let me know if you want to chat (could go old school and break out my AIM account, ha!).

/r/StudentLoans Thread Parent