<prompt> Human: My wifes Dad setup her loans, and Ive just recently gotten access to her loan statements.Her payments are 500month trying to get more details from her on amountdate she started paying graduating from college in 2009 for a DIRECT CONSOL loan from EDLNC on a graduated repayment plan.Original Princ: 67,777Interest Rate: 7.375Outstanding Balance: 71,700Amount paid through 4417: 28,199Internet paid through 4417: 26,034Im freaking out right now. I was lucky enough to not have student loans, but from my limited understanding of this, the payments are only going to get larger, and we are making almost no progress on paying these off.Do we have any options here? As a couple, we make just over 100,000.EDIT: It looks like her loan might have been sold, so the original amount of 67k is as of 2012. She had been making 500 payments since 200910.Assistant: Is 500 the minimum payment required by the loan company? It barely covers the interest.Human: Yes, its the min. This is my first time getting access to all this info, as her Dad set it all up and told her what to pay and such. I am going to immediately increase our payment, but my understanding which may be incorrect was that student loans were structured with a targeted payoff date in mind.  <response>: Its been a while since I had student loans but from what I remember the payments are designed to be easy to make since they assume that a recent grad will not have tons of excess cash. But people are not well educated on personal finance so they just keep making the minimum payment. So its kind of a mix between looking out for you and screwing you at the same time. 