Student Loan Calculator

The Goal of this project is to replicate and enhance the functionality provided by the Department of Education's student loan calculator: https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/repaymentEstimator.action

It has the following major limitations:

• Assumes all loans are new and that no balance has been paid
• Confusing to use and does not make certain stipulations clear (eg: Parent Plus can qualify for IBR if consolidated)
• Assumes 5% AGI increase every year. Should be adjustable
• Does not properly account for various government subsidies.

Additionally the current tool:

• Does not recommend the best program for a brower based on time period and monthly spending goals
• Offers no helpful visualization
• Can be confusing to use to borrower's unfamilar with the details of student loans.

The nitty gritty of how all these programs work is mostly captured here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11vuc6_gN_nULvqU6xMUUtHARifGuENnm?usp=sharing

Setup and local development

The calculator is built on the Next.js framework on deployed on Vercel You will need to install Node.js and then run the following:

npm install
npm run dev

This will launch the local development server on http://localhost:3000