True, Sherpa! Getting your basics squared away is essential. That said, there’s so much more you can do!

To spread my best advice for student loans, I started the topic “finding cheap fun, AKA how to pay your loans while not becoming a social hermit:”

I’m assuming you guys already know the basics. Extended payment plan options. Private loans are worse than the plague. Use your grace period for good and start paying those loans now. Easy! If you’re being aggressive about paying down your loans, the REAL challenge is figuring out how to knock out your student loans fast without having people in your social circle, even friends who also have loans themselves, disown you as too cheap to do anything fun. It’s all about balance.

It’s very helpful become the “cruise director” of your social circle and be the one to come up with frugal, fun things to do. I know in my town, for example, meeting for brunch is a standard default activity friends will suggest. The thing is, “let’s do brunch!” is usually just city-speak for “you’re cool and I want to hang out, but my apartment is embarrassingly messy and/or microscopically small, so let’s meet somewhere else.” It’s fine to occasionally splash out, but if you want to have friends yet not go into debt for weekly helpings of overpriced carbs swimming in butter, it helps to have cool (and inexpensive) alternate activity ideas to offer. I’m on a bunch of “cultural outing” listservs for my city, and have found that it’s much more fun to be thought of as “the friend who always knows which museum exhibits are opening and where the best hikes are” than it is to be “the friend who has to be pried out of her apartment because she’s so cheap.”

It also helps to find support in communities like this one for the Student Loan Sherpa. Mr. Money Mustache (no affiliation, just a fan), is also a good general resource for frugal living.

NitashaS makes an important point. The best way to manage student loans is to keep your loan balance as small as possible from the start. I went to a school like the one NitashaS is describing, where once I was in the system, I was more or less auto-credited with the maximum possible federal student loans each semester unless I took the time to return part of the money. Yes, it’s annoying that the burden of filing out that loan reduction paperwork is the student’s responsibility, but doing so was definitely worth my time, especially when dealing with unsubsidized loans.