<prompt> Human: Ive often seen people saying you need to make sure your extra student loan payments are going towards the principle of your loan rather than the interest on your loan. This confuses me. Can someone explain the difference?My loans through great lakes state that extra payments will be first applied to accrued interest and then towards principal. They will also put me in a paid ahead status so that I could, if needed, stop paying until I am no longer paid ahead. Im assuming this is what I want the loan company to do. Just wondering as I just changed my payment plan to be paying an extra 800 a month and want to ensure I am getting it applied in the best way possible.  <response>: Ive often seen people saying you need to make sure your extra student loan payments are going towards the principle of your loan rather than the interest on your loan.These people dont understand how student loans work.There is no way to make principal only payments on student loans. As ummarsden27 explained, federal law requires all student lenders to apply payments in the same way: outstanding interest and fees first, then principal. Interest accrues daily so there is always some outstanding interest to pay even if its only a couple of dollars.Also, advancing the due date is not necessarily a bad thing. Like you said, it allows you to skip future payments if you choose to do so. Otherwise, just ignore the due date and keep making your regular payments every month.The only time this can be a bit of a pain is if you are on auto-debit, in which case advancing the due date can mess with the way your monthly minimums are distributed. So if you are on auto-debit, it would be a good idea to check the box that says do not advance due date whenever you make an extra payment. 