How to Calculate How Much You Owe on a Student Loan
Some students borrow from multiple lenders each school year, leaving them with a dozen or more student loans to repay. Once you set up your online account management accounts for student loans, you can easily look up the current balance on each of your loans. However, while you are still in school, calculating the amount you owe can be more difficult. This is because you might not know who all your lenders are and interest has probably been accruing on the amounts you initially borrowed.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Look up the amount you initially borrowed, the date on which you borrowed it and the interest rate for each of your student loans. You generally have at least one loan per school year. You can find this information on your student loan origination documents or, for federal student loans, through the National Student Loan Data System.
-
2
Write down the amount you initially borrowed for any subsidized student loan that is in deferment. This is the current amount you owe on the loan because the government pays all of the interest during deferment.
-
-
3
Calculate how many years it has been since the disbursement date on each of your student loans. Use whole years for a rough estimate or portions of years if you want a more exact number. For example, if you took out a loan in September of your freshman year and it is May of your senior year, it has been 3.67 years.
-
4
Multiply the amount you initially borrowed for a specific loan by its interest rate as a decimal by the number of years since the loan was disbursed. For example, if you borrowed $4,500 at 6.8 percent interest 3.67 years ago, multiply $4,500 by 0.068 by 3.67 to calculate that $1,123.02 of interest has accrued.
-
5
Add the accrued interest to the amount you initially borrowed to find out how much you owe now on that loan. In this example, $4,500 plus $1,123.02 is $5,623.02.
-
6
Repeat the process for each of your student loans. For example, you might have a federal student loan and a private student loan for each of four years of college, meaning that you have to run the calculations eight times.
-
7
Add all of loans together to calculate the total amount you owe on all student loans.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
If you can afford it, paying interest while you are in school helps keep your balances from growing before you graduate. This will not only reduce the amount you owe, but also reduce your monthly payment amount.
