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Quicken is an online personal finance management tool that can be used to track transactions and manage bank, brokerage, credit card and loan accounts, including student loans. Quicken allows users to create a budget, manage bills, and create savings goals. Making a budget is the first step in managing student loans and paying off debt sooner.
Tools for Managing Student Loan Debt with Quicken
Quicken has planning tools that can be used specifically with student loans.
The Loan Calculator calculates monthly loan payments and shows the payment schedule. It can also calculate the loan amount. This tool can be used to calculate student loan payments under Standard Repayment and Extended Repayment.
The Debt Reduction Planner is a budgeting tool that can help you pay off debt sooner and reduce the total interest you pay. It provides you with a plan for getting out of debt, based on information about all of your loans in Quicken, including your student loans. It implements the avalanche method for paying off debt quicker. The avalanche method makes the required payments on all your loans and extra payments on the loan with the highest interest rate. The Debt Reduction Planner shows the impact of these extra payments on the loan balance, total interest paid and the date the loans are paid off.
Quicken provides a free credit score, updated quarterly. The credit score is based on the VantageScore 3.0 using Equifax data. This credit score is not necessarily the same as the credit scores used by lenders to make credit decisions. The credit score rates your performance as poor, not bad, good and excellent along multiple dimensions, such as credit card usage, payment history, age of credit, total accounts, credit inquiries and derogatory marks. This can help you identify how to improve your credit scores.
Managing Student Loans Manually
You can add your student loans to Quicken manually, using the “Add a new Loan…” menu option. This menu option lets you specify a loan as a Student Loan, as shown in this screen snapshot.
After you’ve created a student loan account, you can add transactions to the account, such as extra payments.
However, student loan accounts in Quicken do not currently handle the graduated repayment and income-driven repayment plans, just standard repayment and extended repayment. The loan payments under graduated repayment and income-driven repayment will need to be added manually.
Quicken also does not track the number of qualifying payments for borrowers who are working toward public service loan forgiveness.
Linking Quicken to Student Loan Lenders
It may be possible to link Quicken to federal and private student loans, depending on your specific loan servicer. This list of loan servicers was extracted from the FIDIR file in the Quicken configuration. Inclusion of a lender in this file does not necessarily mean that the lender currently supports transaction download or that the lender supports transaction download for student loan accounts as opposed to other account types. The only way to be certain is to try to configure the student loan for One Step Update in Quicken. You can also try confirming with the lender or loan servicer.
Even if a loan servicer supports linking with Quicken, it may show only the borrower’s total student loan debt, not the individual loans, even though each loan may have a different interest rate.
These servicers of Federal Direct Loans are included in the FIDIR file. None of these loan servicers, however, provide information about Quicken integration on their web sites.
- CornerStone Education Loan Service
- FedLoan Servicing (PHEAA)
- Granite State Management & Res (GSMR)
- Great Lakes Ed Loan Services
- EdFinancial Services
- Navient Loans
- NelNet Student Loan
- Oklahoma Student Loan Authority
- MOHELA – Loan
These lenders and servicers of private student loans are included in the FIDIR file.
- ACS Education Services
- Citibank Student Loan
- College Loan Corporation
- Discover Student Loan
- DR Bank (Laurel Road)
- ECSI Borrowers
- E-Loan Resource Cente-Student Loan (Wells Fargo)
- Firstmark Services
- Iowa Student Loan
- ISM Education Loans
- Key Bank Student Loan
- Lendkey
- National Student Loans Service Cen
- NelNet Student Loan
- New Mexico Student Loans
- North Texas Higher Ed Authority (HESC)
- PHEAA – American Education Servi
- Sallie Mae Loan
- South Carolina Student Loan Corp
- Student Assistance Foundation (Aspire Servicing Center)
- Student Loan Finance Corp
- Suntrust Education Loan
- Texas Higher Education Coord Board
- Union Federal Private Student Loan
- Vermont Student Assistance Coopera
- Wyoming Student Loan Corporation
The following lenders and loan servicers are not included in the Quicken FIDIR file, so they probably do not offer linking with Quicken.
- American Student Assistance (ASA)
- Ascendium Education Group
- ECMC
- HESC
- Maximus Federal Services
- NSLP
If you have any trouble or questions, Quicken offers free phone and chat assistance. To learn more about Quicken or sign up, visit their website.
Bottom Line
Quicken can help you get your finances organized and create a strategy for repaying student loan debt and reaching your other financial goals. You can try Quicken for a 30-day risk-free trial.
At Savingforcollege.com, our goal is to help you make smart decisions about saving and paying for education. Some of the products featured in this article are from our partners, but this doesn’t influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own.
