We tested out an app aiming to pay down student loans
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — If your new year’s resolution is to pay off some student loans, there’s an app that can help.
News 8 introduced you to the “Changed” app one year ago and since then I, Nina Criscuolo, have been trying it out.
My spare change has sent $1,000 to my student loan service, in addition to my regular payments. That will save me more than $130 in interest and has shaved more than four months of time off my loans. I’m also $22.66 cents into my next pool and, honestly, I don’t even notice these few bucks here and there coming out of my bank account from the round-ups.
Over the last year the app’s members have grown ten-fold. One big reason is billionaire IU alum Mark Cuban invested $250,000 in the app after its creators appeared on the show Shark Tank in 2018.
The Chicago brothers Nick Sky and Dan Stelmach said they launched Changed in 2017 to help themselves and others get out of student loan debt.
Users link their debit and credit cards to the app and every time they use those cards, Changed rounds the purchase up to the nearest dollar and collects the change. When the pool of change reaches $100, the app automatically sends a payment to the user’s student loan servicer. The app creators said they’ve sent more than $1.7 million in payments to student loan servicers.
“That’s payments that you thought you’d never send to your student loans servicer that we do automatically without having to think about it,” Stelmach said.
“And that translates to decades saved for our members off their student loan payments,” Sky said. “So we’re giving years of life back by helping make these additional payments, so we’d like to in the next year or so be sending millions a month, that would be awesome to see.”
There are also ways to boost your savings by choosing to send an extra $5, $10, or $20 to your round-up transfer. You can also pause the round-ups at any time and the app allows family and friends to make a gift toward your loan.
The app is available for iPhone and Android phones and is free to download. There is a $1 per month fee for using it.