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Thursday, June 24, 2010

Student Loan Consolidation-the Good, Bad, And The Ugly

With tuition costs rising across the country, it's become increasingly necessary for college students to take on debt in an work to get their degree. But student loan repayments are often difficult for students to make, thinking about that early on graduates incomes are usually a bit lower then their final earning potential. Due to these circumstances, Student Loan Consolidation is a valuable option for lots of recent college grads to pursue.

How Student Loan Consolidation Works

Student Loan consolidation works like most consolidation programs. A single lender takes on the various loans you have accumulated, like Stafford, Perkins, HEAL, NSL, & private loans. While the terms & repayment conditions vary among these lots of different lenders, a single loan consolidation company will pay off all these loans & offer you a single, usually longer term, loan. What this means practically, is that in lieu of having to pay off one loan in 3 years, another in 5, & another in 10, or having one loan’s rate of interest be fixed & another variable, all of your loans are compiled under a single process. You can then negotiate along with your loan consolidation lender, about the terms of the loan. Usually, students opt for a repayment plan of 10 to 30 years. Obviously, the longer the term of the loan, the lower your every month payment will be.


Why Consolidate?


Consolidating your student loans offers you the chance to stretch out your payments, so as to take advantage of your future earning power. It is reasonable for students to think that they will earn more as their careers progress, & by stretching out the length of their repayments, they won’t must pay the most on their loan while their income is at its lowest point. Another benefit of student loan consolidation programs is that they take lots of the confusion & issues out of student loan repayment. For recent graduates who have loans from a variety of public & private lenders, maintaining with the one-of-a-kind terms & conditions of every loan can often be a tiny bit of a nuisance. For these reasons consolidation is a popular option. But that does not mean that it is not without its costs.


Why Not Consolidate?


Loan consolidation of any variety, is so appealing for lenders because they can charge comparatively high “consolidation” fees. While student loan consolidation is regulated better than most forms, loan consolidation companies still manage to add a bit to the principle of the loan (that you will ultimately must pay back) in the type of fees. One way to keep away from this is to insist that you be offered the chance to pay for ALL consolidation fees upfront. By doing this, you can be sure that you will at least be made aware of the quantity of charges being imposed on you. Another issue with loan consolidation is that by extending the terms of your loans (say from 5 to 15 years) you dramatically increase the amount of interest you pay on your loans. Your interest payments on your loans accumulate over time. This means that the longer you take to pay your loan back, the more interest will accumulate. Lots of students fail to notice this, as they only focus on the rate of interest, & not the total amount of interest that will be paid over the life of the loan.


Student loan consolidation is a valuable device for students who need to defer their repayments until they earn more or for those who find the nuisance of maintaining lots of of their individual loans to be troublesome. It is important for recent graduates to think about, however, that these benefits, despite what lenders may lead you to think, do not come without negative tradeoffs. By being aware of both the positives & negatives of student loan consolidation, you can make more educated decisions about the whether student loan consolidation is the right solution for you.

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