American pays $900 monthly payments on her students loans Last time she looked was January, the balance was $100k She checked again, after 11 months of payments $9,900, her balance has only gone down $1,400 That’s more than $8,500 in interest every year. This should be illegal

Amortized interest payments. Is this not taught in high school? What are we doing? This is exactly how mortgage payments work as well. If you pay the minimum payment, you will pay a ton of interest. If you kick in a couple hundred extra dollars each month, you will drastically reduce the amount of interest you will pay over the course of the loan.

I told my daughter that the min doesn’t reduce the principle & that she should pay as much as she could each mo. That kid gave up concerts, eating out, etc. and had it paid off in under two years. She also chose a school we could afford & did 2 gen ed yrs at community college.