<prompt> Human: So my wife and I have been on autopilot with student loans for a while. I believed we were paying down all principles and interest in a healthy fashion but Im really doubting our Great Lakes loan. Here is a screenshot of the loan details. Ive read pages and pages about paid ahead status for the last hour on Reddit, Great Lakes, and random blogs. There are varying answers to how this works. For my case, I guess the question is did we pay an extra 9,500 ahead on a 7,500 loan meaning I should be able to close this thing out and they owe me 2k? Or is this some sort of historical data piece that everyone does a really shitty job of describing? The GL knowledge base doesnt really help me understand this at all as it is so vague. We have the standard excess payment preference checked which seems to me to very clearly state that all excess payment gets applied to the principle. Im sorry, I know this question has popped up a lot here but I am somehow still very confused after reading a ton. It is a Sunday so I am trying to get some feedback and prepare for having to call them tomorrow to settle this up. TLDR: If paid ahead amount is 9500 on a 7500 Great Lakes loan, then WTF?Thanks guys!  <response>: did we pay an extra 9,500 ahead on a 7,500 loan?No, that 9,469 has already been applied to the balance the 7,547 is whats left 