Massachusetts student loan payoff calculator

What this calculator is for

A standard repayment plan, or a refinanced private loan. Both work the same way: a balance, a rate, a fixed number of years, and a payment large enough to clear the balance in that time.

That is not how every federal loan is repaid, and the tool says so first among its caveats. Income-driven plans set the payment from your income and family size, not from the balance, and the remaining amount can be forgiven after a set period. A calculator that amortises a balance cannot describe that, and pretending otherwise would produce a payment figure that has nothing to do with what you will be billed. The official loan simulator is the right tool for those plans.

A worked example, using the tool's own defaults

The calculator opens on a $38,000 balance at 6.53% over ten years, with no extra payment.

The extra $100 buys two things at once: 29 months off the term and about $3,430 of interest you never pay. The reason it works this hard is that every extra dollar goes straight to principal, and principal you have already repaid stops generating interest for the rest of the loan.

A second example, at different inputs

Smaller balance, lower rate, same ten-year term: $22,000 at 5.5%, with $150 extra a month.

The extra is working harder here than in the first example, and not because $150 is more than $100. It is because $150 is a much larger share of a $239 payment than $100 is of a $432 one. That is the pattern worth carrying away: what an extra payment achieves depends on its size relative to the scheduled payment, not on the dollar figure by itself. The same $150 against a $62,000 balance would move the term far less.

What moves the number most, in order

1. The balance. Nothing else is close. Both the payment and the interest are close to proportional to it.
2. The term. Stretching $38,000 at 6.53% from ten years to twenty drops the payment from about $432 to about $284 and raises the interest from about $13,848 to about $30,157. The payment falls by a third; the interest more than doubles.
3. The extra payment. Adding $200 a month to the default example clears it in about six years and two months, with interest of roughly $8,773 rather than $13,848.
4. The rate. The smallest of the four over a ten-year term. A full percentage point either side of 6.53% on $38,000 moves the payment by about $20 a month and the total interest by roughly $2,350.

Rate is the input borrowers are most often sold on and the one they can least often change, which is worth holding on to when refinancing is offered as the answer to a repayment problem.

What does an extra payment actually do?

It shortens the loan. It does not, on its own, lower the bill.

This matters more with federal loans than most people expect. An extra payment does not advance your due date in a way that lets you skip next month, and servicers have historically applied unallocated overpayments in ways the borrower did not intend. If you are paying extra, tell the servicer in writing to apply it to principal on the highest-rate loan, and check the next statement to see that it happened.

The tool assumes exactly that: the extra goes to principal, every month, without interruption.

Where the single-rate assumption breaks

The calculator takes one balance and one rate. Almost nobody has one loan.

A typical borrower has four to eight separate loans from different years at different fixed rates, grouped under one servicer and shown as a single balance. Amortising the total at a blended rate gives a good estimate of the standard payment, because that is roughly what the servicer does. It understates what an extra payment is worth, because in reality you would direct the extra at the highest-rate loan first and retire that one early.

So read the extra-payment lines as a floor, not a ceiling. The tool says this in its own caveats, and it is the one place where reality is better than the model.

Should you refinance federal loans with a private lender?

Usually not, and the tool is blunt about it.

Refinancing a federal loan with a private lender converts it into a private loan. You give up income-driven repayment, the statutory forbearance and deferment options, and any forgiveness programme you might have qualified for, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Those protections have no price tag on a rate sheet, which is exactly why they are easy to trade away.

The trade is rarely worth a small rate cut. It can make sense for a borrower with a secure high income, no interest in public service work, and a rate gap large enough to matter. It is a poor idea for anyone whose income might fall, which is the situation the federal protections exist for.

Refinancing private loans with another private lender is a different and much simpler question, because there is nothing to give up. Our guide to student loan refinancing covers what to compare, and recent repayment changes covers what has moved on the federal side.

Why income-driven repayment sits outside this model

An amortising calculator answers one question: what payment clears this balance in this many months. Income-driven repayment answers a different question, which is what share of your income the plan will ask for, given your family size and where you live.

Three consequences follow, and none of them can be drawn on this page.

The payment is not tied to the balance, so a much larger balance may produce the same bill. The length of repayment is set by the plan rather than by the arithmetic, and the amount still outstanding at the end of that period may be forgiven. And because the payment can be smaller than the interest accruing, the balance can rise while you are paying on time, which is the reverse of everything shown above.

Federal plans and their terms are set by legislation and regulation, so which rules apply to you depends on your loan types and when you borrowed. That is a reason to check your own account rather than any article, this one included. The official loan simulator asks for the details that decide it, and our note on recent repayment changes covers what has moved.

How to check this against your statement

Four checks, in order, all of them using documents you already have:

• The balance. Use the current payoff balance from the servicer, not the amount you originally borrowed and not the totals on your old financial aid letters.
• The rate. Your account lists a rate for each loan. Where they differ, a balance-weighted average is the honest input for a blended estimate, and the loan-level rates are what decide where an extra payment should go.
• The scheduled payment. Compare it with the standard payment here. A large gap usually means you are on a plan that is not standard repayment, which is worth establishing before you plan around this figure.
• The allocation of anything extra. Next month's statement should show the extra applied to principal rather than parked as a prepaid future instalment. If it does not, a written instruction to the servicer is the fix, and it is worth repeating each time the servicer changes.

The mistakes that cost the most here

Refinancing a federal loan with a private lender for a rate cut that looks worth having. The loan stops being federal on the day it closes, and income-driven repayment, statutory forbearance and deferment, and any forgiveness you might have qualified for go with it.

Reading an income-driven payment as though it amortised. Those plans set the bill from income and family size rather than from the balance, so the payment can be smaller than the interest accruing and the balance can rise while you pay on time, which is the reverse of every table on this page.

Running one blended rate and then spreading an extra payment evenly across every loan. The tool assumes a single rate and says so in its caveats, and the extra is worth more sent at the highest-rate loan until that one is gone.

Expecting an extra payment to reduce next month's bill. It shortens the loan instead, and unless you instruct the servicer in writing an overpayment can be parked as a prepaid future instalment rather than applied to principal.

Typing in the amount you originally borrowed. The current payoff balance on the servicer statement is the input; an old award letter describes a different number from a different year.

Treating the 6.53% default as a rate that applies to you. It is a plausible fixed rate for recent undergraduate borrowing and nothing more, and each of your own loans carries its own.

What this tool does not do

Its caveats set out three limits, and all three matter:

1. It does not model income-driven repayment. Payment from income, possible forgiveness, and an interest picture that can grow rather than shrink. None of that is here.
2. It does not model refinancing trade-offs. It will happily compute a lower payment at a lower rate and say nothing about what that rate cost you in protections.
3. It assumes one blended rate. Several loans at different rates pay off faster if the extra goes to the highest rate first.

There are two more worth stating. It assumes the rate is fixed, which is true of federal loans and of most but not all private ones. And it assumes no capitalisation event, so it is a repayment tool rather than an in-school or deferment tool. Interest that accrues while a loan is not being repaid, then capitalises onto the principal, is a real effect this does not show.

A checklist for your own loans

Everything here is done from documents you already have access to, and most of it takes one sitting.

• Sign in at studentaid.gov and write down which of your loans are federal and which are private, before any refinancing conversation starts.
• Record the rate on each individual loan from the servicer account rather than carrying one figure for the total.
• Take the current payoff balance from the servicer statement, not the amount on your original financial aid letters.
• Compare your scheduled payment with the standard payment worked out here, and if the gap is large, establish which plan you are actually on.
• Send the servicer a written instruction to apply anything above the scheduled payment to principal on the highest-rate loan.
• Check next month's statement to confirm the extra was applied to principal and not held as a prepaid instalment.
• Before signing any refinancing offer, list what the loan would give up: income-driven repayment, federal forbearance and deferment, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility.

Where the money should go first

An extra $100 a month is not automatically best spent on a student loan. The ordering that usually holds:

• Anything at credit card rates comes first. A card at 24% costs three or four times what this loan does. The credit card payoff calculator shows the gap plainly.
• An employer retirement match comes before both. It is an immediate return no loan rate matches.
• A basic cash buffer comes before optional overpayment. A missed emergency turns into card debt at a much higher rate. A high-yield savings account is where that buffer belongs.
• Then the highest-rate loan, one at a time.

Once the buffer and the match are in place, extra payments on this loan are simply a guaranteed return equal to the rate, which at 6.53% is a good return with no risk attached. Every other tool is in the calculator index, and our methodology sets out where the figures come from.