Student Loans: Consolidation & Repayment

You made it through college and now the world stands open before you but there’s that little student loan that just won’t stop following you. You could repay your student loans with the sweet job you just strolled into or if you have a number of loans you can journey into the world of student loan consolidation. However, not everything is peaches and cream for the average college graduate who will leave college with a bare minimum of $20,000 in student loan debt if not more.

There are forgiveness programs that will adjust payments based on your income, but a lot of those require you to make a minimum of ten years worth of payments and will ultimately forgive the remainder of the loan after 25 years. If you were to pay one thousand dollars in student loan repayments over 25 years then that would be well over the original 20,000 dollars worth of loans and that isn’t counting the fact that interest on student loans is the true killer and any student loan repayment program isn’t going to let you get away with just paying one thousand dollars a year.

So, the bottom line is the loan repayment is as sure as sunrise but there is hope. Jobs are beyond difficult to find for most graduates these days so a decision must be made on the part of you, Joe (or Joy) College. Do you want to scratch and claw for that dream job while swimming or even drowning in debt or will you choose practicality over playtime for a while? Government jobs, the military, volunteering, teaching, or working in low-income areas offer deals on paying back those pesky loans. Some programs pay back thousands or even tens-of-thousands of dollars per each year of employment.

Refinancing student loans is also a smart idea when exiting college. That first job you walk in to may not cause dollars to start raining from heaven so loan consolidation is a way to group all of those little student loan interest payments attached to the variety of student loans into a single payment with a single interest rate. Watching the federal interest rate also helps too because in some cases you can refinance to get an even lower interest rate, which is what you need to worry about during your student loan repayment period.

If worse comes to worse go into deferment. Call up your loan consolidation company and just be honest with them about your money troubles. If you get an unhappy, grouch of a representative, hang up and call again until Susie Sunshine answers and helps you with your questions and concerns. Don’t worry though, most companies will allow you to defer payments for one to two years. Just try to make those interest payments if you can so your student loan doesn’t grow into a monster. Job sites like usajobs.gov or college financial aid sites like studentaid.ed.gov offer loads of information about repayment benefits or options.