There Was No Go-To Student-Loan Tool in 2018. Then the Rules Got Rewritten.

In 2018, back when most financial-planning software treated student loans as an afterthought wedged between insurance and estate, Kitces.com published the guide the niche didn’t know it needed: “Best Student Loan Planning Software For Financial Advisors.” It walked through the tools advisors actually had, gave real credit to the rise of the Certified Student Loan Professional designation, and closed with a line most software roundups would never dare print: at the time, there was no real “go-to solution” for student-loan repayment analysis.

We’ve taken a first pass at the update advisors need now, our new Compare page, to get the ball rolling.

That honesty is exactly why the guide has aged so gracefully as a piece of writing, and exactly why it’s overdue for an update. So consider this a love letter. With a few notes in the margin.

The quiet date stamp

The guide carries a timestamp that’s easy to miss: first published October 2018, last meaningfully refreshed in early 2023. And in the years since, federal student-loan repayment didn’t just change, it was rewritten down to the studs.

The SAVE plan arrived after the guide was written, was challenged in court, and is winding down. The old income-driven alphabet soup, REPAYE, PAYE, ICR, is being phased out. And the One Big Beautiful Bill replaced it with the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) and a new Standard plan, taking effect July 1, 2026.

A guide built around the pre-2024 rules now describes a world that’s sunsetting. The deficiency isn’t in the writing, it’s in the calendar. This corner of planning simply moved faster than anything else on an advisor’s tech stack.

What an advisor needs that the guide can’t tell them yet

Here’s the honest context: the Kitces AdvisorTech landscape is enormous, and Michael and his team have a lot on their plate. Student-loan software is one small, fast-moving niche in a massive map, exactly the kind of corner a tiny specialist shop is built to keep current. So think of this as us helping out, not second-guessing. Here’s what shifted after the ink dried.

1. The new rules are load-bearing. RAP changes what millions of borrowers actually pay, roughly 1–10% of income, a $10 minimum, forgiveness at 30 years, and it interacts with PSLF, the new Standard, and the state-by-state forgiveness “tax bomb” in ways the old plans never did. Any tool whose math predates July 2026 is modeling a country that no longer exists.

2. The “go-to tool” gap finally got filled. That verdict held for years for a structural reason: the market was split in two. Specialist tools went deep on federal strategy but ignored the rest of the balance sheet; broad planning suites treated student loans as a bolt-on. The category that finally answers it is the one that refuses to choose, deep on RAP, IDR, and PSLF and wide across private loans, credit cards, and the full debt picture; flat-priced with no per-client fees; and arithmetic you (or an enterprise diligence team) can inspect to the cent. One advisor who plans with Finology calls student-loan planning “a mini financial plan”, and that whole-picture lens is exactly what we built for.

That’s the gap we built Finology Software to fill. Not because the guide was wrong, because it was right, early, and the market took years to catch up to the bar it set.

Why these are margin notes, not a takedown

Here’s the thing about a love letter: the edits are the affection. The guide named a real gap when almost no one in the profession would even look at it. Everything we’ve built stands on that standard.

So, Michael, if you and the team are ever inclined to refresh the guide for the RAP era, consider this a running start. We’re a small shop, but this niche is what we do all day, and we’d be honored to help. Kitces.com named the gap in 2018; we’d love to showcase what’s been achieved since. Consider the margin notes a thank-you.

See how the two old categories stack up against one engine on our comparison page, or explore our sample client, Lance Harbor, and run a real NSLDS file through the Liability Planner and IDR Comparison to model RAP, the new Standard, IBR, PAYE, and PSLF in minutes. Start free, no credit card.