5 Best (and worst) Private Student Loans (2019-2020)

Application links:
LendKey: http://bit.ly/lendkey-student
Earnest: http://bit.ly/earnest-student
Discover/SallieMae (maybe, perhaps, avoid them)

Private student loans are messy, here’s the five best (and some of the worst) lenders. I tried to come up with another best 5 video – to show you which lenders everyone likes, but it turns out, most student loan originators have lawsuits against them.

In this video, I review Earnest, Credible, LendKey, SallieMae, and Discover. These five lenders are among the most discussed, but which is best, and which is worst?

To rank them, I turned to the world of open reviews. Not the biased sort you get from paid NerdWallet reviewers, but from actual customers. When I looked into the reviews, I noticed something interesting.

People almost always had positive things to say about companies that provide the money. Credible, for example, gives loans but never collects on them. Earnest is the same. These two companies had universally great reviews, and why wouldn’t they? They’re the rich grandma handing out $50s on your birthday.

The companies that collect the debt? Those had pretty universally bad reviews. No one likes the bill collector, after all.