Federal Student Loan Consolidation Could Help Make Recent Graduates’ Student Loan Repayment Easier to Manage
February 10, 2008 Federal Student Loans No CommentsIf you graduated in May with student loans, you may be facing six-month grace periods that are ending sometime this month. Once your grace periods are over, you’ll be entering repayment on those student loans that were in grace.
If you’re looking at multiple student loans going into repayment, you’ll soon likely have to deal with juggling multiple bills, multiple due dates, and multiple monthly payments. But you could help make your student loan repayment easier to manage by consolidating your eligible federal student loans with a Federal Consolidation Loan from NextStudent, a leading Phoenix-based education funding company.
How Federal Student Loan Consolidation Works
A Federal Consolidation Loan bundles all your eligible federal student loans into one single loan with one monthly bill and one convenient monthly payment. To be eligible for student loan consolidation, you can’t currently be enrolled in school more than half time, and the student loans you want to consolidate must be in repayment, in a grace period, or in an authorized forbearance or deferment period.
If your parents have Federal PLUS Loans that they took out to help you pay for school, they’re also eligible to consolidate. And your parents don’t have to wait for you to graduate in order to consolidate their own PLUS loans: Parents can consolidate the PLUS loans they took out for your education as soon as the loans have been fully disbursed and have entered repayment, even if you’re still in school. Your parents can consolidate their parent PLUS loans, but you won’t be able to consolidate your own student loans together with your parents’ loans.
Benefits of Federal Student Loan Consolidation
- No fees and no cost to apply
- No credit checks and no co-signers required
- No prepayment penalties
- Fixed interest rate
- Repayment terms up to 30 years
- One single monthly payment for all your eligible federal student loans
There’s never any charge to apply for a Federal Consolidation Loan with NextStudent, and there are no credit checks or co-signers required. There are also no prepayment penalties, so you’ll never be charged for paying more than the minimum each month or for paying off your student loan consolidation early.
Student loan consolidation gives you the security of a fixed interest rate: With a fixed rate, you’ll lock in your monthly payments when you consolidate, and you’ll never have to worry about variable interest rates going up, leaving you guessing about your monthly payment amount.
Consolidating your federal student loans could also give you more time to repay—a Federal Consolidation Loan could extend the repayment term on your student loans by up to 20 years. And by extending your payments over a longer repayment term, a student loan consolidation could lower the amount you have to pay each month. By consolidating with NextStudent, you may be able to cut your monthly student loan payments by as much as 50 percent!
Consolidating Your Private Student Loans
If you have private student loans in addition to (or instead of) federal student loans, you won’t be able to consolidate your private loans with the federal student loan consolidation program. But if you’re looking for the same convenience of a single consolidated loan for your private student loans, you may be eligible to consolidate your private loans separately with a NextStudent Private Consolidation Loan.
