If you have attended college and it wasn't paid for by an employer in attempt to further your degree, chances are that you have incurred some student loans. For many student loans are sort of put on a back burner, at least temporarily, because they don't have to be paid back until you have graduated or are no longer attending school. These loans become payable after six months.
Many people look to consolidate their student loan which is very similar to refinancing your mortgage. This is a way of taking several student or parent loans and putting them into one loan. If you take the weighted average on all of the loans that you want to consolidate and round them to the nearest 1/8 of a percent but with a limit of 8.25%, that would be your interest rate.
This doesn't necessarily mean that your interest rate will be lower but when you are consolidating loans that have varying interest rates, yours should fall somewhere in the middle. There is never a fee to consolidate student loans and if anyone tries to charge you one then they are likely a loan scammer.
Anyone can consolidate their student loans however they can only be consolidated for one borrower. That simply means that if a parent and a child had separate loans they couldn't consolidate them together. They could however consolidate them separately. Not since 2006 have married couples been able to consolidate together. It was determined that it was too risky in the event of a break up to have them paid.
The grace period on a student loan is six months after they have left school. It is during that time or during the repayment of the loans that the student would qualify to consolidate their loans. The exception is for Parents Plus loans which can be consolidated at any time.
Many times consolidators want to make sure that you have incurred a specific amount of debt before they are willing to consolidate. This amount is usually a minimum of $5000. The only thing that lenders can control is the amount of debt but they can not discriminate on any other condition about the debt.
Any kind of federal loan can be consolidated. Loans can only be consolidated one time but consolidation can be an option again if there are new unconsolidated loans added to them.
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