Add Student Loan Payments to Your Holiday Wish List Through This App

Is your grandmother still asking you what you need for Christmas?

How about the gift of freedom from student loan debt — available for the low, low price of $30K?

Just kidding (sort of).

Student loan management app Pillar has launched a new feature, a gifting platform called Boost, which allows friends and family to make contributions directly into your student loan accounts. (This is particularly helpful if the $25 Nana usually gives “disappears” into pizza night.)

It’s probably for the best that the money goes directly to an account anyway — Grams probably doesn’t have a box big enough to contain outstanding student loan debt, which stood at $1.48 trillion in the second quarter of 2019.

If you go the gifting route, you’ll need to set up a free account on Pillar, where you’ll add all of your student loan account and bank info. The app also recommends student loan repayment plans based on your income and spending info.

Then you’ll need to set up a Boost profile page with your photo, bio and the amount received so far — it looks similar to the donation pages for those fundraiser walks, except here the fundraiser is you.

But you’ll have to set up your profile in a hurry — the gift platform only lasts from Dec. 17 through January 7. And through Dec. 23, PIllar will give some users special holiday surprises of additional payments ranging from $25 to $250, which could make your holidays even happier.

Don’t feel like setting up a crowdfunding page but are still facing a pile of student loans? Check out our tops ways to pay off student loan debt.

After all, debt-free living is the gift that keeps on giving. Memaw would agree.

Tiffany Wendeln Connors is a staff writer/editor at The Penny Hoarder. Read her bio and other work here, then catch her on Twitter @TiffanyWendeln.