Can you use student loans for anything?

How do student loans work? Once I start paying them back, do I have to pay back consistently?

• Like if I have $1000 now gathered from working as a student for 2 years, can I use that to pay some of the loan back? Or, is it that once I start paying back loans, I can't stop, and I must consistently pay them back every month? Also, do student loans have minimum sums we are allowed to pay every month? Like can it be that i'm only allowed to pay if i'm paying in a minimum sum of $800 or $1000? P.S. this is not for me, so its not like I can look over a contract or anything like that.

• Answer:

  It seems like everyone who answers on this subject just refer you to a website. Here's my knowledge so far on my son's student loan... He just got accepted for his first fiscal year in school and the fine print states that if you pay $1000 when your payment is only $250 (example), then your next payment wouldn't be due until after those other payments are paid from what was left of the $1000, meaning, you have an extra three months of payments paid from that money before you had to pay again. Make sense? But no matter if you overpay or pay monthly, you do need to make sure you pay on time, or it could affect your credit rating. I'm not sure what you're saying on your second part, but all loans have a minimum payment due each month, if that's what you're talking about. So what it comes down to is that you can always pay more than what you owe. No bank will turn down money early.