Saturday 11 June 2011

Why Consolidate Student Loans ?

By Norman Harris


It is always good to consolidate student loans once your grace period is over. When you consolidate student loans, a more manageable approach is established to make one single payment rather than dealing with multiple lenders.

Keep it simple by consolidating your student loans to one single account that will be paid off over the course of time. How long will it take to pay off your consolidated loan? Well, that depends on the amount you owe. It also depends on the repayment plan you choose. Let's go over some of the more common options.

Consolidation Loan agencies will provide you to access of many option repayment plans for you student loans. These alternatives consist of extended repayment, income contingent repayment and graduate repayment.

These alternative repayment options all depend on what type of loan you are dealing with. A ten-year repayment plan will be an established if you don not specify the precise repayment term for your consolidated student loans.

When you do decide to consolidate student loans, this will reduce the amount you pay for the monthly payments. This however can extend the term of the loan. Federal loans in general offer and extension to the 10 year repayment plan. It all depend what you owe on the loans and you can extend the term of the loan up to 30 years.

Your monthly payments will be lowered upon extending the term of the loan. A lower payment is easier on life, and with that you are able to meet deadlines each month. If you decide to take that path of extending your loan payments, expect to pay more interest on the loan over the term. In other words, by paying more on your loans now, you spend less in the long run.

In general, it is best to go with the ten year standard plan when you consolidate student loans. The alternative repayment plans will lower your monthly payment each month, but you end up paying more in the long run.

Just do the research and everything will work out.




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