I thought student loans didn't have interest, or at least very low interest? [UK]
From the description, you have a post-1998 income contingent loan. The interest rate on those is currently 1.5% but it has varied quite a bit in the last few years due to the formula used to calculate it, which is either the inflation rate (RPI), or 1% + the highest base rate across a group of banks - whichever is smaller. This is indeed really cheap credit compared to any commercial loan you could get, though whether you should indeed just repay the minimum depends on making a proper comparison with the return on any spare money you could get after tax elsewhere. There is a table of previous interest rates. From your description I think you've had the loan for about 4 years - your final year of uni, one year of working without repayments and then two years of repayments. A very rough estimate is that you would have been charged about £300 of interest over that period. So there's still an apparent mismatch, though since both you and I made rough calculations it may be that a more precise check resolves it. But the other thing is that you should check what the date on the statement is. Once you start repaying, statements are sent for a period ending 5th April of each year. So you may well not be seeing the effect of several months of repayments since April on the statement. Finally, there's apparently an online facility you can use to get an up to date balance, though the administration of the loans repaid via PAYE is notoriously inefficient so there may well be a significant lag between a payment being made and it being reflected in your balance, though the effect should still be backdated to when you actually made it. If I recall correctly, the pay schedule is such that you initially pay mostly interest.  As James Roth suggests, look at the terms of the loan, specifically the payment schedule.  It should detail how much is being applied to interest and how much to the actual balance.
Pay off your highest-interest debt first: credit card, car, maybe even mortgage. Pay minimums on all else. Student loans are typically low interest, so pay off anything else first, but double-check your rate of course.  Even if you have no other debt, you may still want to hang on to your savings instead of paying down your student loans if getting rid of your savings causes you to accrue debt. For example, if you have a low income and no savings, you may accrue credit card debt (high interest). Or you may want to buy a car with cash instead of getting a loan. Even if this is not an issue, consider what you can do with your savings that others who lack them cannot do. You can put it into mutual funds, which may offer higher rate of return (albeit with risk) than your student loan interest. Or you may pay a down payment on a home. The very low interest rates of student loans are, to a person with savings, essentially a source of cheap money that doesn't need to be justified to a bank. You can use it as seed money to start a business, as funds for travel, for living expenses while in the Peace Corps, or whatever else. But if you pay down that principal, you bind yourself. In short, pay down your student loans when there is no better use for the money. I faced something similar for travel or work reasons, and as for me I preferred wire transfer over credit card withdrawals because my bank has huge fees. My thoughts so far are: the fee can vary a lot for credit card. As for me, I can expect 5% fees on foreign withdrawals. But I considered changing bank and I think a Gold (or premium) card might be a good idea as well. The idea is you pay a big subscription (100 euros or so) but have no fee. The total of withdrawal fees could easily (if you stay long abroad) reach this amount. There are also banks like HSBC that offer low fees on withdrawals abroad, you can ask them. The problem is that you cannot really withdraw huge amounts to lower the fee (since you carry this cash in the street). for wire transfers the total fee is usually $50 or more (I had a fee from distant bank, a fee for change and a fee in my home bank). But the amount is unlimited (or high enough to be of little matter) and I needed to do this once per year or so. So I guess it could be interesting if you have enough savings to only transfer money every couple of months or so. I think Western Union is also involved this profitable business. I never used it because the fees are pretty high, but maybe it is useful for not too big amounts frequently transfered. Actually, have you considered a loan? It's a very random idea but maybe you can use a loan as a swap and then transfer money when you have enough to reimburse it all. But the question is very interesting, I think the business is pretty huge due to globalization. It is expensive because some people can make a lot of money out of it. Like all other loan-vs-savings questions, it depends on the terms of the loan. If you have a choice, the usual answer is to pay off the loan with the worst terms (which usually means the highest interest rate) first, and only start with savings when you've paid off all the high-interest loans entirely. If your student loan is on US terms, then pay it off as soon as you can, unless you have commercial debt (credit-card or unsecured personal loan), which you should pay off first, or unless you have or are realistically likely to get eligibility for a forgiveness program. But it does depends on the terms of the debt, which in turn depend on the country you studied in; on UK terms it's a very bad idea to pay off a student loan any faster than you have to.  Interest is restricted to the rate of inflation, so good investments probably beat the interest rate of the student loan; the required repayments vary with your income, so savings are more useful than debt repayment if you encounter income difficulties (e.g unemployment) in the future, and finally the debt is automatically forgiven after 30 years, so you may never have to pay it all back anyway - so why pay it off voluntarily if it would get forgiven eventually anyway? "First, it's clear from your story that you very likely should be able to receive some financial aid.  That may be in the form of loans or, better, grants in which you just get free money to attend college.  For example, a Pell grant.  You won't get all you'd need for a free ride this way, but you can really make a dent in what you'd pay.  The college may likely also provide financial aid to you.  In order to get any of this, though, you have to fill out a FAFSA.  There are deadlines for this for each state and each college (there you would ask individually).  I'd get looking into that as soon as you can. Do student loans have to be paid monthly?  Any loan is a specific agreement between a lender and a borrower, so any payment terms could apply, such as bimonthly or quarterly.  But monthly seems like the most reasonable assumption.  Generally, you should assume the least favorable (reasonably likely) terms for you, so that you are prepared for a worst-case scenario.  Let's say monthly. Can I just, as I had hoped, borrow large sums of money and only start   paying them after college? Yes.  That is a fair summary of all a student loan is.  Importantly, though, some loans are federal government subsidized loans for which the interest on the loan is paid for you as long as you stay in college + 6 months (although do check that is the current situation).  Unsubsidized loans may accrue interest from the start of the loan period.  If you have the option, obviously try hard to get the subsidized loans as the interest can be significant.  I made a point to only take subsidized loans.   WARNING: Student loans currently enjoy a (nearly?) unique status in America as being one of the only loan types that are not forgivable in bankruptcy.  This means that if you leave college with $100,000 in debt that begins accruing interest, there is no way for you to get out of it short of fleeing the country or existence.  And at that point the creditors may come after your mother for the balance.  These loans can balloon into outrageous amounts due to compounding interest.  Please have a healthy fear of student loans.  For more on this, listen to this hour long radio program about this. Would a minimum wage job help,  Of course it will ""help"" but will it ""help enough""?  That depends on how much you work.  If you make $7.50/hr and work 20 hrs/week for all but 3 weeks of the year, after taxes you will be adding about $6,000 to offset your costs.  In 3 years of college (*see below), that's $18,000, which, depending on where you go, is not bad at helping defray costs.  If you are at full-time (40 hrs), then it is $12k/yr or $36k toward defraying costs.  These numbers are nothing to sniff at. Do you have any computer/web/graphics skills?  It's possible you could find ways to make more than minimum wage if you learn some niche IT industry skill.  (If I could go back and re-do those years I wouldn't have wasted much time delivering pizzas and would have learned HTML in the 90s and would have potentially made some significant money.) would college and full-time job be manageable together?  That's highly specific to each situation (which job?  how far a commute to it?  which major? how efficient are you?  how easily do you learn?) but I would say that, for the most part, it's not a good idea, not only for the academic-achievement side of it, but the personal-enrichment aspect of college.  Clubs, sports, relationships, activities, dorm bull sessions, all that good stuff, they deserve their space and time and it'd be a shame to miss out on that because you're on the 2nd shift at Wal-Mart 40hrs/week. How do I find out what scholarships, grants, and financial aid I can apply for?  Are you in a high school with a career or guidance counselor?  If so, go to that person about this as a start.  If not, there are tons of resources out there.  Public libraries should have huge directories of scholarships.  The Federal Student Loan program has a website.  There are also a lot of resources online found by just searching Google for scholarships--though do be careful about any online sources (including this advice!). Sermon: Lastly, please carefully consider the overall cost vs. benefit to you.  College in 2012 is anything but cheap.  A typical price for a textbook is $150 or more.  Tuition and board can range over $40k at private colleges.  There is a recent growing call for Americans to re-think the automatic nature of going to college considering the enormous financial burden it puts many families under.  Charles Murray, for one, has put out a book suggesting that far too many students go to college now, to society's and many individuals' detriment (he's a controversial thinker, but I think some of his points are valid and actually urgent).  With all that said, consider ways to go to college but keep costs down.  Public colleges in your state will almost always be significantly cheaper than private or out-of-state.  Once there, aim for As and Bs--don't cheat yourself out of what you pay for.  And lastly, consider a plan in which you complete college in three years, by attending summer courses.  This website has a number of other options for helping to reduce the cost of college." "If the balance on the low rate loan is very high (say, an IBR student loan at 6% that accumulates interest every year), and the balance on the high rate loan (say, a CC at 18%) is comparatively very small, then you'd want to make sure that you've at least ""stopped the bleeding"" on the high balance loan before starting to pay off the CC." "Your thinking is unfortunately incorrect; an amortising loan (as opposed to interest only loans) pay down, or amortise, the principal with each payment. This means that the amount that is owed at prepayment will always be less than the total borrowed, and is also why some providers make a charge for prepayment. The ""fairness"" arguments that you make predicated on that misunderstanding are, therefore, incorrect." I recently paid-off $40k in student loan debt. One of the motivations for me to accelerate my payments was that over time, as my income increased, the amount of student loan interest I could write-off on taxes started to phase-out. "This is largely a cultural issue. I would be appalled at the very idea that my parents would charge me interest for lending me money. Just as they would be appalled if I were to do so if lending them money. I find the idea of attempting to make money off of your children fundamentally wrong.  I realize that you only want to do this to teach them, that you have their best interests in mind and not your own profit. Nevertheless, what will actually happen were you to charge them interest is that you would accrue a monetary gain at the expense of your children. Is that really something you would be comfortable with? Now, as I stated at the beginning, this is clearly a cultural issue. Based on the other answers here, many cultures, probably including your own, find nothing wrong with this. I've even heard of people charging their adult children rent when they come home for the holidays, something that is completely baffling to me.  The point I am trying to make is that asking other people's opinions on whether you should do this is not very useful unless those people share your own cultural background. My family and culture are such that the idea of charging interest to one's family members seems downright immoral to me. Given that you are asking here, it seems like you might be on the fence about it yourself. However, I freely admit that my answer is colored by my own cultural prejudices and may very well not be applicable to you.  Still, ask yourself, is a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things—or, for that matter, an entire fortune—worth jeopardizing your relationship with your children? Do you really believe that having their parents retroactively charge them interest for a loan will somehow teach them something about the ""real world"" that your already adult children don't know? One of the main reasons they came to you and didn't go to a bank is precisely that they expected the loan to be interest free.  So, sure, tell them that you won't lend any more until they repay what they owe. Even better, sit them down and have an honest, adult conversation, explaining that the absence of the money they owe is making itself felt in your household and work out a way they can repay you.  What, in my opinion, you most certainly shouldn't do is treat your relationship with your children as a regular business transaction. It isn't and I am sure you don't want it to be."