How We Research
This page explains where our information comes from and how we verify it before it reaches you.
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The student loan system is complicated by design. You aren't confused because you aren't smart enough to understand it — you're confused because you don't do this full-time. We do.
Our sources
We build our content from two directions simultaneously.
For accuracy, we go to primary sources: the Federal Register, official Department of Education policy guidance, StudentAid.gov documentation, CFPB reports and enforcement actions, and federal court opinions for bankruptcy and borrower defense cases.
For relevance, we pay attention to where borrowers actually are. That means monitoring forums like Reddit to understand what questions are surfacing in real time and how people are describing their situations in their own words. It means staying in contact with a network of professionals who work in this space — state student loan ombudsmen, former Department of Education officials, attorneys at the National Consumer Law Center, and advocates at organizations like the Project on Predatory Student Lending.
The ground-level signals tell us what to write about. The primary sources and professional network tell us whether what we’re seeing is accurate and how to interpret it. Neither one alone is enough.
How we handle updates
When the rules change — and they change constantly — our goal is not to be the first site to publish. Our goal is to be the most accurate.
When a court blocks a repayment plan or the Department of Education issues new guidance, we read the actual text before we update anything. We take the noise and turn it into something actionable. Stanley personally reviews every material change before it goes live on the site.
Legal information, not legal advice
The articles here explain how the law works. They are not a substitute for legal advice, and reading them does not create an attorney-client relationship. Your specific situation — your tax filing status, your loan history, your employer — changes the math. If you need Stanley to review your specific file and build a custom strategy, that is what a consultation is for.
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If you spot something outdated, a broken link, or something that contradicts what you're seeing on your own loan file, we want to know. Report a correction →
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