Like Mint, Tuition.io is super easy to set up, as long as you are okay with giving them access to your personal accounts. Actually, I felt that setting up my Tuition.io account was less painful than setting up Mint. The only thing I had a problem with was remembering my Federal PIN (shows how much I was checking that...).
Once you've linked your loans to Tuition.io it automatically creates a graph for you. There's a slider at the bottom representing your monthly payments. You can slide it to the right to see what would happen if you increased your monthly payments by X dollars, and low and behold the graph shows you how much faster you'll pay off your loans. Under the graph it also tells you in months how much sooner you'll pay them off, and how much you'll save by not letting interest accrue. Other things you can track in the graph section is your progress since joining, details about you student loan accounts, and your transactions.
Given my love of graphs I seriously spent about 30 minutes playing with this and imagining how to get the money for those payments, and what it would be like once my loans were gone. Think of all of the amazing trips I could take! Or I could buy a condo! Anyway, I clearly found this to be a motivational tool.
The other aspect I liked is many people I feel like don't know the exact dollar amount that they owe on their student loans. It's just some large vague figure looming over them. For me I never sought out to know the exact amount because of the painful process of checking. There are several different lenders, countless passwords and security precautions, just to get an update. Well, Tuition.io now makes this easy to access. It aggregates all of your loan info into one place, so you only have one password to really keep up with (of course you still need to store/remember your other passwords!).
At the top of your page there is a link to "Your Plan". Here you enter in a little about your financial situation, and then Tutition.io suggests what to do with your loans. Personally, I didn't find this very useful. Tuition.io told me to consolidate my loans and to set up an income based repayment plan. I've already done both of these things.
However, if you are a recent graduate, or still in school, then this would definitely help. I think the only reason I consolidated my loans when I did was because I had a friend that worked in the Financial Aid Office at a school. She pretty much told me everything I should do in regards to my loans, and told me I was stupid if I didn't follow her advice :).
While I think that Tuition.io is fun, and motivational, I don't know how often I'll be checking it. I think I'll set a goal for at least once a month. There's not a whole lot that's going to change daily on my loans, or advice/tools to pay attention to. Also, I checked my iPhone, and couldn't find a phone app for it. I'm addicted to apps, so that was a bit of a let down.
One thing I should note: they have a blog! I might check the blog out more often for any useful tips. From the few articles I've read the blog seems pretty accessible to the average person, plus some articles have fun gifs (ie. the Sharknado/Student-loan-nado gif). If you're interested check out their blog here.
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