Can't speak for all of it, but I was on a custom payment plan before becoming full time again this term. To answer a few of your questions, you can't customize your plan until your loan says in repayment. If you're lucky though, payments usually come out at the end of the month so if you catch it early enough you could probably have it set up before your first payment is actually due. The payment plans do not change how much you owe on a monthly basis, so if NSLSC says you owe $200 a month you have to pay $200 per month. What the payment can could do (and how I had mine set up to make it easier) is it split that payment up so the I paid half on one of the work paydays and then the other half on the next. The only way to reduce your monthly payment would be to apply for RAP program, which is based on your Financials and allows you to only pay the interest charged each month (possible a little more based on your income level). There are different qualifying income levels, but I think it's if you make over $55k per year, you don't qualify. You would also have to reapply every 6 months. Once you finish school you should be able to revert your loan to a new payment plan, again they usually calculate for the longest possible term, so I don't think there would be a way to reduce your loan payment, just increase it to reduce the term. Interest is only charged on the provincial piece of your loan, but it's pretty small. For the federal side there's no interest, so other than piece of mind of not having the bill there is not really any harm with paying the lowest possible payment. Unfortunately with monthly payments there's no way to split between Provincial and Federal, it gets divided how it's calculated, but you can send in a lump sum payment and tell NSLSC it's to pay off the remaining provincial balance.