Manage Your Federal Student Loan Account at My Ed Account

by Ronaldo on January 9, 2013

Myedaccount.com is the website through which you can manage your federal student loans. The site is designed to help folks who benefited from federal student aid before. That is as opposed to people who are currently in school (and who are currently benefiting from the federal student aid).

my-ed-account-on-www-myedaccount-com

Myedaccount and direct loan beneficiaries

Myedaccount.com is likely to be of particular importance to folks who took up the so-called ‘direct loans’ and who previously managed them from www.dl.ed.gov. The functions of www.dl.ed.gov have been migrated to Myedaccount. This is to say that you will have to access Myedaccount to perform the functions you previously used to perform at www.dl.ed.gov.

Worth mentioning here is the fact that the nature of migration from www.dl.ed.gov was such that the login credentials used on www.dl.ed.gov won’t work on www.myedaccount.com. On creating an account at www.myedaccount.com, you have to create a new username and password. Further, the login procedure at www.myedaccount.com is such that you no longer need to use the Federal Student Aid PIN as a login credential. The username and password you create on the site will suffice as login credentials.

Myedaccount functions

There are many things you can do, as a federal student aid beneficiary, once you manage to access www.myedaccount.com. These include:

Checking student loan balances

If you want to know how much you still owe on your federal student loans, www.myedaccount.com is the site to log into. There are times when you may not know exactly how much you owe (and when you actually need to know). Knowing how much you owe in terms of student loans is important for, among other things, personal financial planning purposes.

Checking student loan payment history

There are a number of scenarios where it may be important for you to check your student loan payment history. Take, for instance, a scenario where you have lost track – perhaps as a result of paying through automatic direct debits for some time. In that scenario, you may find it necessary to access Myedaccount to check your student loan repayment history. Closely related to this may be the scenario where you need to print your student loan verification letter.

Signing up for payment via automatic debits

Myedaccount facilitates the payment of student loans through automatic (monthly) debits via the Kwikpay system. If you often forget to make loan repayments on time — leading to penalties or any other types of sanctions — you may consider signing up for this option. The idea would be to have the loan amounts deducted (debited from your account) automatically every month, on a particular date, so that you don’t have to suffer sanctions. You only need to log into myedaccount.com, specify that you want to sign up for these automatic debits, give the details of the account you want the funds to be debited from, and myedaccount.com will take over everything from there.

Making online payments

It costs nothing (in terms of fees) to make federal student loan repayments at myedaccount.com. It is also highly convenient to make federal student loan repayments at Myedaccount. You thus get a chance, through myedaccount.com, to save the time and the money you’d otherwise have spent trying make student loan repayments.

Consolidating the student loans

You can kick-start the student loan consolidation process at Myedaccount. The concept of student loan consolidation is quite simple. It so often happens that as you go through your studies, you have to take student loans from several lenders. Upon graduation, you end up with several student loans to service. Servicing several student loans can be hectic: hence the need for consolidation of the loans, into a single loan (so that you only have to make a single payment per month).

Signing up for electronic communication

By default, the government communicates with you about your federal student loans through the traditional postal mail. So do individual lenders you may have taken student loans from. But we all know that postal mail has many imperfections. It is slow, and there is always the possibility of your confidential financial information ending up being seen by the wrong eyes. That is why you may find electronic communication about these (federal student loan) matters ideal. You can sign up for such communication at myedaccount.com.

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Fafsa Federal Student Aid at www.fafsa.ed.gov

by Ronaldo on January 9, 2013

www.fafsa.ed.gov is the site through which you can file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) online. There are many things you can do, while logged into www.fafsa.ed.gov, among them:

Filing applications for student aid

To do this, you need to click on the button labeled ‘start a new FAFSA.’ Upon doing this, you will be redirected to a new page, where you will find a small form that you need to fill in. The details you need to fill in that form include your first name, your last name, as well as your birth date and your social security number. Upon filling in these details, you will be redirected to yet another page, where you can start the actual FAFSA application.

There is also the option of printing out the Free Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms in PDF form, filing them using a pen, and then mailing them to the relevant authorities through the postal service. Yet another option is that of filling the Free Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form on your computer, using your keyboard, printing out the filled in form, and then mailing it to the relevant authorities through the postal service. The Department of Education does, however, seem to recommend the online filing of FAFSA forms, as opposed to the scheme where you mail the filled in form through the postal service.

Viewing student aid reports

To do this, you will have to start by logging into www.fafsa.ed.gov. This site is unique, because you don’t log in using the normal username-password combination used in other websites. Rather, you log into by entering your first name, your last name, your social security number and your birth date. Having thus logged in, you will be redirected to another page, where you will be given the chance to select what you want to do. If what you want to do is enter your student aid report, you select that option, and the report is presented to you. This happens if you had applied for federal student aid, and if your application has been processed.

Correcting filed student aid applications

There are times when you may submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, only to discover that you need to correct something in it. If you made an online application at fafsa.ed.gov, making such corrections is just a question of logging into fafsa.ed.gov, accessing your FAFSA form and editing it as necessary.

Checking federal student aid options open to you

To get an overview of the federal student aid options open to you, you need to access www.fafsa.ed.gov, then click on the StudentAid.gov option (on the top of the home page, where there are options like Home, About Us, PIN Site and Help). Upon clicking on the StudentAid.gov option, you will be redirected to another website, the federal student aid site (www.studentaid.ed.gov).  There you will find answers to pretty much any question you may have pertaining to federal student aid options. You will find information on the types of financial aid you can get. You will find information on the qualifications for the various types of federal student aid. You will find information on how to prepare for college (at a general level). You will find information on how (exactly) to apply for the federal student aid. Finally, you will find information on how to manage your student loans, once you get them.

Checking federal student aid application deadlines

The nature of federal student aid is such that you can’t just apply for it anytime you want. There are application deadlines, which are quite strict. Against that sort of background, it makes sense to check the application deadlines, and www.fafsa.ed.gov is the most authoritative resource for information about those deadlines. To view the deadlines, you click on the ‘deadlines’ links in the home page, whereupon you are redirected to another page, where you can access deadline information by specifying your state of residence and the year for which you are seeking federal student aid.

Checking federal student aid application school codes

One of the details you have to provide, when applying for federal student aid, is the school code. It is not always easy to remember this off-head. But you can access the school code on www.fafsa.ed.gov, by clicking on the ‘school code search’ link in the home page. Upon doing that, you will be redirected to another page, where you will need to specify the year for which you are seeking student aid, and the state the school you are interested in is. Optionally, you can enter information about the city, the school’s federal code and the school’s name. If you don’t enter the latter details, fafsa.ed.gov will give you results for all schools in the state you selected.

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ACS Student Loans

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