Sarah's Testimonial & Story

When Sarah's grandmother called one afternoon, Sarah wasn't expecting what came next.

The student loan company had phoned her grandmother, her cosigner, to say that they had not been receiving any payments.

Sarah told her it was a mistake, and that she'd just made a payment. She reassured that it must not be in the system yet, and that she'd look into it.

She hung up and started crying.

"I just lied to my grandmother. Something I never wanted to do."

On a teacher's salary, she'd been told it would take 75 years to pay off her loans.

Collectors had already been calling her mom, and now they were calling her grandmother. Sarah was in shock.

"If they tell her there's a balance due, she's going to pay it. And that's not her responsibility. This is my problem to solve."

That night she couldn't sleep. At 3am, she rolled out of bed and sat down at the kitchen table. She started filling out one application after another in a frantic attempt to get her loans finally under control.

Deny. Deny. Deny.

Then she found Yrefy. She called, scared and exhausted.

"Am I going to get in trouble for this?"

Tatum answered: "Let's just try. It's not going to hurt you to try."

Sarah's mom was in hysterics because she didn't know if any of it was real. Tatum got on a three-way call with them both, answered every question, and kept calling back for weeks until the fear faded.

One day she called Sarah with the good news: "You've been fully accepted. Your interest rate is 0.94%."

"Did you say 9.4?"
"No, honey. 0.94."

And just like that $1,500 a month became $716, and 45 years became 8.

"I can dig myself out of this avalanche now."