<prompt> Human: I have federal student loans totaling close to 20k, so obviously I would like to find the most painless solution to pay this off.I called the number and got someone who purported to be with a 3rd party called the Alumni Resource Center Right now Im paying a lot so I can pay it off quicker, but we talked about reducing it and getting rid of the interest due to the William D. Ford Act he explained it but Im not great with some of the bigger technical financial terms. They asked for my password to look at my information on the federal loan servicing web site - I thought that was suspicious and I told him so.Anyone have any experience with this company? I dont have any proof that the person I talked to is actually with this company either. The man I talked to said his name was James Brown haha and gave me his office number.Anyone have any experience with this company?On a side note I heard about sofi.com the other day and have been looking into that.Thanks!  <response>: They asked for my password to look at my information on the federal loan servicing web siteRed flag! Hang up the phone! You did the right thing telling him it seemed suspicious, never give out your password to anyone!Also email your loan servicer so they know that this kind of call is going around. Idk what information they are able to extract from your loan information page but they may just be trying to harvest passwords, password reuse is a big problemAs for the real issue at hand. Consolidation is generally a bad option, particularly with federal loans. They generally give you the weighted average interest rate and add an eight of a percent to it so you really arent any better off than you started but you have lost the ability to avalanche through you loans and all the protections afforded by having federal loansIBR, PAYE, deferment, and forbearance.You dont have a ton in loans, if you have even an extra 200 to throw at them you should be able to avalanche through them pretty quickly. Play with unbury.us to see how long it would take you to pay them off with different extra amounts per month, and when you have loaded your loan info in there edit your main post with the link and it will give us all the info on your amountsinterestminimums. 