Can Student Debt Consolidation Help You With School Loans

Student debt consolidation is when you refinance each of your federal school loans into a single loan that has a fixed interest rate. It is also the term used to describe refinancing a single student loan with a new interest rate. The interest rate of the student debt consolidation loan is derived from the average rate of each of the loans combined.

The interest rate you receive when you get a student debt consolidation loan should result in less money spent over the long term of repaying school loans. What many students are unaware of, is that you will be unable to get a student debt consolidation loan to combine your federally funded student loans with your private loans. When you consolidate federally funded school loans, they can only be consolidated with a federal loan program and the federal loan programs will not consolidate a privately funded college loan. If you do have a combination of privately funded student loans and federally funded student loans, it is definitely worth looking into student debt consolidation even though you will not be able to get one loan for all your debt. Look for government sponsored student debt consolidation programs for each of your federal school loans. These programs are designed to help students get an affordable monthly payment, and while you cannot include private education loans, they do take your payments to the other student loans into consideration when creating your new monthly payment on your student debt consolidation loan.

Many federal loans can be consolidated with interest rates of about 4%, which should save you considerable money over the long term. Once you have consolidated the federal loans, you can look into consolidating your privately funded educational loans into a single loan, as well. This is very beneficial if you have more than one private loan with different interest rates.

Consolidating will allow you to make a single payment and pay a single interest rate on the total balance rather than keeping track of two or more monthly payments for your private loans. It will save you considerably on interest fees, as well, even if the resulting consolidated loan has a slightly higher interest than the loans individually. When you first graduate college, it can be very difficult to make your school loan payments. Student consolidation loans can go a long way in helping you manage your college expenses as you enter the working world. These kinds of loans are fairly easy to apply for. Federal consolidation programs allow you to fill out online forms in a matter of minutes.

Private consolidation loans may be a little more difficult, as the banks are going to base the interest rate and the approval on your credit history and how likely you are to be able to pay your loan back. It may be beneficial for you to get a co-signer on a privately funded school debt consolidation loan in order to get a better interest rate.

Ken Black is the owner of Debt Relief Today, a website that has lots of information about Debt Consolidation.