Should I consolidate my student loans? (bewildered student seeks help)?

Consolidation takes a weighted average of your loans, which means higher balance gets more weight. the interest rate on your $11,333, if it was %7.14, you weren’t in grace anyway, it would have been 6.54%. More bad news, on july 1st, your interest rate went up to 7.22%.

So with $11,333 @ 7.22%, and $5,666 @ 6.8% would approx. be 7.125% for the entire $17,000 balance.

Consolidation will reduce your payments( by extending your payments), and will lock the larger loan into a fixed rate.

hope this helps

It may not pay you to consolidate as the consolidation rate is a weighted average of your exisitinf rates. You have more loans at a higher rate, so your overall rate will be somewhere in between. Advantages to consolidating include a longer repayment period, 20 vs 10 years, and one payment. As for when to do it, during your grace is fine, but you will want to ask teh lender to finish and start your repayment as close to the end of your grace as possible, just so you can use that time to get ready! Be sure before you sign anything you completely understand the terms of the loan, interest rate, payments amounts, length of repayment, any penalties for early payoff, or extra payments (there should be NONE, but be sure).

Good luck.

Hiyas!

To your question, I say it depends on your program to an extent. I’m in education, and I have been told that since I am doing a forgiveness program with my loans, if I were to do a consolidation program I would no longer be eligible to get forgiveness.

This, of course, applies to the student aid forgiveness and deferment programs. You may have nothing to do with this, therefore consolidating may be a great idea.