GradJoy Review | View And Manage All Your Student Loans

Keeping track of multiple student loans has never really been an easy task. Since most students end up with several loans, there are multiple websites and logins to keep track of.

It’s also not uncommon for loans to be sold or serviced by a different company. Depending on how well the transition from one loan servicer to another goes, students may not even be notified that their loan is being sold. This can lead to late payments and additional fees. Or worse, the account could go into collections.

GradJoy is a mobile app that's trying to make it easier to keep track of student loans by allowing you to view all of your student loans in one place. They can also help you find the most efficient payment plan available. In this article, we’ll go through a review of what GradJoy has to offer.

What Is GradJoy?

GradJoy (Forward Lending, Inc.) is a fintech that helps people manage and pay off their student loans faster. It's a Y Combinator-backed company. GradJoy was founded in 2019 and is based in Austin, TX. Its Co-Founder and CEO is Jose Bethancourt. The company has raised $150,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator.

What Does It Offer?

You likely have an idea of how much you owe on each loan. But imagine being able to actually see every loan balance at the same time? GradJoy lets you view all of your student loans in one app in one view. This is extremely convenient.

But what if you only want to view your balances and don’t want to use GradJoy for making payments on your loans? Unfortunately, this is an area where GradJoy falls short. The only way to use it is to link your checking account to the app. Of course, if you just want to see all of your loan balances, there should be no requirement to link your checking account.

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything you can do with the app unless your checking account is linked. It will simply sit there waiting for you to link an account. It would be best if GradJoy stated this upfront. Instead, you only find out that a linked checking account is required after you've linked your student loans.

Consolidated View Of Student Loans

Remembering all of your various student loans, their websites, and related logins can be a pain. That doesn’t even factor in when a loan is handed off to another servicer, which you may or may not find out about.

Because GradJoy keeps all of your loans in one place, you can always see what is going on with them. Even if a loan is handed off to another servicer, you should see a balance or name change when that happens.

Find The Best Payment Plan

GradJoy automatically looks for the best payment plan. It does this by comparing federal, state, and private repayment options. And if it finds that a federal income-driven repayment (IDR) plan is your best option, it can help you collect all the required paperwork and file it on your behalf.

Join PSLF And Track Your Progress

If your work for the government or a not-for-profit organization, you may qualify to join the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF) program. But many hopeful applicants have been rejected due to simple filing mistakes. GradJoy says that it can essentially automate the complicated PSLF process by filing the required documentation for you and keeping track of your qualifying payments over time.

Know When Your Loan Will Be Paid Off

GradJoy provides a projection of when your loan will be paid off based on your current payment plan. Want to try a different plan? GradJoy will display the original payment plan against the new one in graphical format. This display provides an easy way to compare which payment will meet your goals sooner.

Are There Any Fees?

No, GradJoy is completely free to use. There are no monthly fees and no features are hidden behind a paywall.

So how does GradJoy make money? For now, it mostly earns income by referring its users to student loan refinancing companies. It receives a referral commission whenever one of its users applies for refinancing with one of its lender partners.

Over time, GradJoy says it hopes to branch out into providing other financial services. And as the app's feature set grows, it may eventually being to charge one-time or monthly fees.

How Does GradJoy Compare?

GradJoy isn't the only app that lets you view all of your student loans in one place. LoanBuddy and Snowball Wealth are two competitors that offer similar tools and features. Check out this quick table below to see how GradJoy compares:

How Do I Open An Account?

You can visit the GradJoy to download the app. It's available for iOS and Android. The only way to interact with GradJoy is through the app. Once the app is downloaded, you’ll create an account. iOS users can sign in with Apple.

Once your account has been created, you’ll link your loans. A code will be sent via text or email to verify each loan account. Once a loan account is connected, it will display the loan balance.

Next, you’ll connect your bank. This is not an option. All of your loan info has disappeared at this point and the only way to view it again is to connect your bank account. If you don’t want to connect your bank account, there’s no reason to keep GradJoy installed since the app will be useless.

The developer name is listed as Forward (iOS) or Forward Lending, Inc. (Android) on the app stores.

How Do I Contact GradJoy?

GradJoy makes it easy to contact them. All of their contact info is consolidated into one page: https://gradjoy.com/support. Below are the various ways that you can contact GradJoy.

Email: [email protected]

Text: (512) 714-6940

And chat through their website. They are also on social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Customer Service

There aren’t many places to find reviews of GradJoy. The best two are from mobile app stores.

Is It Safe And Secure?

Yes., GradJoy uses encryption on its website and Plaid for connecting to financial institutions. Plaid is a financial industry standard. None of your financial institution login information will be passed around. It is all tokenized through Plaid.

Is It Worth It?

GradJoy can be a useful app if you're ok with linking a bank account. The ability to see what is happening to your student loans in one simple view can be a nice time saver. And if one of your loans is moved to a different servicer, you’ll be able to see this change in the app. But if you just want to view your loans without linking a bank account, you’re unfortunately out of luck.

Keep in mind that you can also simplify payment by consolidating multiple loans into one. If you want to keep your federal benefits, you can combine your federal loans via a Direct Consolidation Loan. But if you want to consolidate both your federal and private loans together in addition to potentially lowering your interest rate, you may want to consider applying for student loan refinancing with one of our favorite lenders.

GradJoy Features