Friday, January 5, 2007

Loan Consolidation Basics


Loan consolidation has many benefits. But before you sign up for one, it is important that you are well informed on the basics and the pros and cons of student loan consolidation.

Rising tuition fees means that student loans are becoming larger as students pursue their studies and carriers. Subsequently, due to high student loans, it has become common for students to have student loans that heavily impact on their day to day living and financial situations for a long time during and after their studies. Due to the potentially huge amounts of students’ loans, the debt could impact on your future decisions and your credit history. In order to have a good credit history, your student loan debt should not exceed 8% of your income.

How can you reduce your student loan debt burden?

* You could eliminate or reduce the primary balance.

* You could reduce the monthly total payment. Given that debts are measured by comparing your income to the loan payment, if your payment is reduced, it will help you in evaluating the credit.

What are the main types of student loans?

Although there are various kinds of student loans, the most common are the federal and private student loans. The federally funded loans are managed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid programs. It is easy for anyone to get a federal educational loan. These loans are funded the U.S government though grants, work-study support and loans.

Private student loans are controlled by standard lending facilities. The most common student loan program could be obtained at renowned banks such as Citibank, and normally these kinds of lenders charge high interest rates and provide unsecured loans.

One is better off with federal student loans as compared to private student loans. The interests on federal loans are tax-deductible and if you decided to go back to school, you can also defer the payments. On the other hand, private loans do not provide any benefit.

If you have a private and federal loan, it is not recommended to consolidate and mix them together. The best way of doing it is to consolidate every one of your federal student loans and then could consolidate your private loans separately. If one was to combine both the federal and private loans in consolidating, all of the federal benefits will be ineffective.

What are the main 3 criteria used to determine one’s eligibility for consolidating his federal student loans?

1. Firstly, the person should no longer be enrolled in school.

2. Secondly, the person should be actively repaying the debt or at least be in the grace period of the loan.

3. Thirdly, consolidation companies require the customer to have a minimum loan amount. The average amount is $10,000. Student debt consolidations come with many plans. These plans offer basically the same services. These key benefits which one can get are a reduction in the size of monthly payment, lowering the monthly payment, improvement of the overall credit rating and saving useful money.

If a student had a huge student loan, and they do not consolidate it, this will impact on their ability to acquire any mode debt in the future such as mortgages or car loans among others. By consolidating your student loan, you improve your financial situation, and you get a lot more flexibility with your finances.

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