Tag: Consolidate

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Student Loans

How to Consolidate Federal Student Loans – FDLP, FFELP, Etc

The cost of higher education continues to rise. Many students are unable to afford to finish college. Because of this, Student Loan Consolidation has been made available to students. Student Loan Consolidation is multiple loans combined into one loan. The US Government and the Department of Education has developed Federal Loans to help students pay for their higher education. These loans allow the student to combine their federal loans into one loan. By paying one loan they're paying one creditor.

Federal student loans are provided by the US Government and the US Department of Education. The Federal Direct Student Loan Program (FDLP) and Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) have been developed to help students and parents consolidate their loans. These two programs allow students to consolidate PLUS Loans, Federal Perkins Loans and Stafford Loans. Students get lower monthly repayments and a longer payment period. These loans usually provide lower interest rates and fees. For these programs, the fixed interest is usually the weighted average of the interest rates of the loans that were consolidated. Congress set the formula for the federal interest rate. Federal programs give graduates longer repayment periods. A student can have a repayment period from 10 to 30 years.

There are two Programs for Federal Loan Consolidation:
o The Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL) was a result of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The program is funded by private and public partners. FFEL also makes use of government funds and private companies. The private companies that fund this program receive subsidies from the government.

o The William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program (FDLP), commonly known as Direct Loans. With this particular program, instead of the Government or a private company, the US Department of Education acts as the creditor, handling the student's loans.

Federal Loans have three types:
o The Perkins Loan is a consolidated loan provided by the US Department of Education for college students. It has a fixed interest rate of 5% for a 10 year repayment period. With usual consolidation companies you are required to start repayment after six months of graduation. With the Perkins Loan you have a nine month period after graduation. The loan limits for undergraduates are $ 5,500 per year with a lifetime maximum loan of $ 27,500. For graduate students, the limit is $ 8,000 per year with a lifetime limit of $ 60,000.

o Stafford Loan offers a lower interest rate but has strict eligibility requirements and limits. There are subsidized and unsubsidized loans. With Subsidized loans the interest is paid by the Federal Government. For Unsubsidized loans, the students pay the interest. Examples of Stafford loan companies are Sallie Mae, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wachovia Education.

o A PLUS Loan is for parents and graduate students. To be eligible for this loan, the parent or graduate student has to pass the credit check. Usually interest rates are higher. This loan allows the parent to make use of the total cost of the college fees such as tuition, room and board.

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Student Loans

Why You Should Consolidate Your Student Loans Now

When you were attending college, the multiple offers of student loans and the easy availability and access may have been a huge temptation that you simply could not resist. Many students rely on funding during their college years to not only pay for education, but also to help them meet the everyday expenses of being a student, such as rent or board, books, transportation, clothing, and other costs. For these reasons, many students end up with a huge student loan debt. Student loan consolidation can really turn your financial situation around if you are struggling to meet the monthly payments for your loan obligations.

Student Loan Consolidation Defined

Student loan consolidation is the process of taking many loans that were written by a multitude of lending institutions and servicers and combining them into one big student loan. It will feature just one payment to one lender and can be written at a better rate of interest with smaller, easier to manage loan payments being made each month that better reflect the income that you have available to meet your financial obligations.

Benefits of Consolidating Your Student Loan Debt

There are numerous benefits that can be reaped from loan consolidation. The most obvious benefit of consolidating your student debt is that you will make only one payment each month instead of writing checks to multiple servicers. These programs typically feature a greatly reduced interest rate on the balance owed, which can save you a ton of money over the course of repayment to all of your lenders.

Most student loan consolidations will allow the student to seek a reprieve from payment during times of hardship, such as when they are unable to find suitable employment or if they cannot make enough money to meet the payment schedule. The plans that are available under consolidation are typically very flexible and are built around the budget of the graduate in order to make their student debt more manageable.

A consolidation loan can also postpone the amount of time before the student enters into repayment, which is typically in the months just after graduation or when the student drops below half time enrollment in college. Additionally, consolidation programs will allow you to lock in a low interest rate that cannot go up even if the market fluctuates, like some variable rate loans can. Students are never penalized for paying early or for paying more than the payment due with a loan consolidation. Your interest paid during a consolidation loan is tax deductible.

Students Who Are Not Degree Holders

There should be no misconception – students are required to repay their student loans regardless of whether they finish school or not. For those students who have dropped out of school or dropped below half time enrollment, student loan consolidation is also an option that is available.

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Student Loans

Merits and Demerits of Consolidate Student Loans

The greatest advantage of a student loan consolidation program is the conversion and merger of several loan payments in to convenient consolidate student loans. You gain an advantageous position when you get these with the terms reset. The consolidation brings along with it many benefits like deferments and lower monthly payments, thereby lessening your debt worries and protects your wallet. You can start saving the money right from the day you take that, and can enjoy financial freedom.

Before attempting to these loans, you should try to know about the procedures involved in consolidating your various private student loans. You can really make your life easy by joining the private student loan consolidation program and pay just one decreased monthly payment. In order to fit to your financial budget, you can tailor your needs of private loans by analyzing the monthly payments and interest rates. By turning to such plan, you are putting your one or multiple loans into one basket so that you can make the repayment easily. The interest rates of consolidate student loans are set according to your credit rating. With a better credit score, you can negotiate with your current lender or switch over to another lender for a lower interest rate. Alternatively, you can study the interest rates by comparing the private loans with home equity loans. By fixing your variable interest rate, you can also opt for home equity loan at fixed rates to fund your private ones.

When you try this, you will find that there are different types of lenders offering varied interest rates. In the case of private consolidation program, the interest rates of the loans will be determined by the individual lenders. In some cases, you may have to pay even some amount of extra fees for these. Do not plan to take from the private lenders along with that of federal Government. You have to treat both of them separately. While making your choice to these loans through private lenders, make enquiries about the rate fixed by them, fees attached with them and whether they impose any prepayment penalties.

You have to learn how to consolidate these in a better way in order to get maximum financial benefits. To avoid frustration in future, and to save time and money, you have to explore on the various types of these loans. If you find it difficult to make the repayment on time, you may have to face the danger of default of these, which will land you in deep trouble. There are some negative aspects associated with the defaulting here. Other lenders may even deny you fresh loans when they come to know of that default. For example, you may get your wages reduced, and a bad credit rating with extra interest and fees on the original loan. To make matters worse, your tax refunds may also be seized. Only when you consolidate student loans, and make the repayment on time, you can bring back normalcy in your trouble torn loan life. To save your financial ship from the deep ocean of debts, it is also very important for you to find out the right lender to consolidate student loans.

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Student Loans

Consolidate Student Loans and Shop Online

If you run a home business, you know that budgets can be pretty tight. Saving money wherever possible can be the difference between the business that succeeds and the one that fails. This article represents a broad survey of things you can do, from consolidating your student loans to getting small business deals on supplies, that will help you spend less each month.

Next Time You’re Online, Buy Something

Billions of dollars are spent each year online. Rather than suggest that you hurry and move your business online, I’d like to suggest that you add some of your dollars and cents to those billions already spent. Companies who move operations online reduce their overhead costs and often pass on those savings to you. Computers, airplane tickets, even student loan consolidation, can be purchased or arranged online. It has been my experience that I can find almost everything I want online for less than I can find it anywhere else. Next time you’re thinking about biting the bullet and making that big purchase, spend a little time shopping around online and see if you can’t save a few dollars.

Consolidate Student Loans and Get Your House in Order

Chances are good that you’ve been out of school for a while, but don’t skip this paragraph. If you consolidate student loans or other financial obligations, you will typically save a great deal of money each month on your monthly payments. Running a home business often blurs the line between personal expenses and business operating costs – do yourself a favor and make sure you have your personal financial affairs taken care of before you find yourself overwhelmed with past obligations. The government might not have cared about your credit score when they gave you those student loans, but banks looking to give business loans are a whole different story. Making sure everything is taken care will keep financial doors open that, once they’re closed, are very difficult to reopen.

Score One for the Little Guy

Believe it not, most people want small businesses to succeed. There are a lot of people willing to give you a break on prices because you own a home business, but you might need to ask about it. Office supply retailers and computer distributors sometimes offer discount prices to registered small business owners. The savings are not always monumental, but even the smallest savings multiplied over a year or two start to add up to pretty substantial amounts. Shop around to see if the suppliers you use are willing to offer you a discount on supplies or equipment.

Do Without…For a While

I’m probably not the only person that drove a car that was older than I was during college, or who ate Ramen noodles more than once almost everyday. Don’t forget the lessons you learned while you were a poor college student – the same ability to make do with what you have can save you a lot of money in the long run. I had just graduated from college and I wanted to get a new computer to replace the older, though fully functional one I was using. This was before I took my own advice to consolidate student loans, so money was still pretty tight. I wanted to kick myself when I saw that the price on the computer I bought dropped $300 in three months. Some expenses are necessary and unavoidable. For everything else, look to see if you can manage with what you have for a while longer.

Don’t Do It Alone

Nobody likes data entry – it’s time consuming, boring, and time consuming. If you find yourself spending too much of your day punching numbers into spreadsheets, consider hiring someone or outsourcing it to another company. If you think that you can’t afford the part-time salary, do an inventory of your time and see if what you would pay someone is worth the amount of time you’ll be able to invest into the meatier matters of your business.

I know I’m risking sounding like your father giving you a lecture about money, but remember that a penny saved is a penny earned. A successful business minimizes costs while maximizing profits.

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Debt Consolidation

Ways to Consolidate Your Debt in only a Few Short Steps

Sit back and think about how much would financial stability be worth to you? It isn’t a difficult question to answer I would imagine. The answer should overwhelmingly be a whole lot. After all, who wouldn’t want less financial stress in their life and live their lives with a greater peace of mind. If all of this sounds pretty nice and maybe is something you would like, then you need to read up on a fairly simple process that can solve all these problems. This easy way to rid your life of financial burden is called debt consolidation.

Simply put, debt consolidation is a method of having two or more financial obligations such as school loans and a mortgage and then combining them into one large debt. More and more people are choosing debt consolidation as an easier way of handling multiple credit card debts through combining several credit card balances into one consolidated account. You now have an easy-to-manage budget all in one place.

  • Write down all your debts on paper including all your credit card bills, mortgages, car loans and any other personal debts you may have. Find out the balance, interest rate and monthly payment on each.
  • Figure out how much you can pay on each debt and when you can realistically complete paying back the loan. An example of this would be if you pay $40,000 for your car at the end of 15 years. If you have any questions on this step, it is best that you ask a financial adviser.
  • As you are going over and reviewing all of your available options, always have your final numbers in mind. You should be asking yourself questions like how long will it take you to pay off your new loan and will it cost you more money over the long run? If any of your answers are not to your liking then you may be forced with just sticking it out with your existing loans, even if payments are a little higher.
  • Expertly knowing and navigating the in’s and out’s of various loan programs requires a lot of heavy duty number crunching. If you don’t think you are up to the task, again hire the help of a financial adviser.
  • You can save paying on the interest by making higher monthly payments than the minimum on a regular basis than you need to. This will also cuts down the number of years you will be paying on the loan significantly.
  • Have you ever put much thought into refinancing your original mortgage on your home? If so, you should pay attention to how much equity will be left in your home if you do go this route.
  • One popular way of dealing with debt is to transfer one credit card balance to another card. Before you do this, check the maximum limit on the cards, and go with ones with a low APR. Stay away from cards where the APR is not high for balance transfers.
  • Get in contact with a nonprofit service such as American Consumer Credit Counseling. They can negotiate lower payments and make it so that you pay all of your bills by writing just one check to the agency each month.
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Debt Consolidation

Consolidate Debt Credit Counseling – You Need to Know

Troubled with rising debts and number of payments and need a solution but yet again facing a same problem where to go and what to choose with a considerable attraction of combining debts. As one and paying the amount and probably near to select a facility of consolidate debt, credit counseling can help you out not only to evaluate whether a consolidation is effective and optimistic decision for you, but it will also help you consider other available options and enables you to make a check on the other availabilities and customized calculation on those available options according to your financial condition and future prospects. In this article we will see how a consolidate debt credit counseling helps you on your different settlement levels.

As if we see through the procedure of consolidate debt credit counseling we see the most important and the starting phase which is budgeting. In this phase we usually calculate the objectivity of a particular plan and calculate the odds so that we decide to go with this plan or not. Important fact about this phase is that it is not just to calculate the practicality of a particular plan but it is also a directorial process which helps a debtor even prior to the condition when he decided or forced by his financial gloom to go for a debt settlement plan.

Consolidate debt credit counseling is also important and useful than any other practices available because it helps to manage the debt when it is in a decline and a candidate is suffering from various issues regarding the credit scoring, debt amount payments with a considerable amount of low savings and finances. It is the most critical situation for any debtor when he has a date of payment on his head and he has no amount to pay because when it was a time to select a management plan he refuses to go with it but those who have selected it will get a planning for the payments as well as they get a considerable amount of debt reduction, a certain decrease in interest amount and as well as the waive of on penalties of overdrawn payments.

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Debt Consolidation

Want to Consolidate Credit Card Debt?

Learning how to consolidate credit card debt is one of the best things cardholders can do. Consolidation is perfect for those who are looking to better their credit for the future. There are many advantages for cardholders that take advantage of credit card debt consolidation. If you are thinking about consolidation, then there are a few things you should consider before doing so. Use these tips as a guide while you consolidate your debt.

Why Consolidate?

There are several great reasons to consolidate credit card debt. One of the best reasons is to get better rates. If you can get a better rate on a consolidation than you currently have, then there is no reason not to consolidate. Consolidating credit card debt can add up to substantial savings.

Look up all of your interest rates from each card and write them on a list. Then note the new rate you would be given. If the new rate is lower than the average of the old rate, then to consolidating your credit card debts would make financial sense for you. If there are cards that have a lower rate, then you don’t have to include them in your consolidation.

Another reason people love to consolidate credit card debt is to make their lives simple. By paying one bill, they can cut out a lot of stress and bill paying time. You should probably not consolidate your debt for this reason alone however. You don’t want to pay more in the long run just to cut out a few pieces of mail monthly. Consolidation also gives those in a credit card mess a chance to get out of it. By consolidating, they may be making lower monthly payments than they would be if they did nothing. By closing out the other accounts, their credit may also be improved.

Who To Turn To?

When considering credit card debt consolidation, you should turn to professionals for a consultation. There are many credit card companies and banks that would like to help you with your request. Make sure you do your research so that when you consolidate credit card debt, you are certain you are making a decision that is profitable to you. Make sure there are no hidden fees that come with different consolidation plans. Doing your research can help you save money for the future.

Making The Choice

If you want to consolidate credit card debt, you should first look at all of your debt in detail. Once you know what you have, it will be easier to contact professionals to help you with your consolidation. Don’t be afraid to tell them you are shopping for the best deal. You should do yourself the honor of getting the best deal out there to making your consolidation as worthwhile as possible.

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Debt Consolidation

Should You Consolidate Your Debt

Many Americans are in debt and more are going into debt every day due to high cost of gas, food, clothing, utilities and housing. Many Americans don’t have enough money to pay even basic necessities and have to resort to using a credit card to buy food and gas. This has caused many Americans to owe thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Luckily there are many options available to eliminate or reduce debt. One option that can be used to eliminate or reduce debt is debt consolidation. Debt consolidation can be done on your own or by using a debt consolidation, debt management company or bank.

Consolidating debt works by making one monthly payment to a debt consolidation company which is disbursed or divided among your creditors. This monthly payment is usually lower than the total of your individual creditor accounts.

Debt consolidation reduces the monthly bill, lowers your monthly interest rate and halts charging late fees. This can be done by: taking out a home equity loan, a home equity line of credit or a debt consolidation loan from your bank. There are other options for consolidating debt such as: refinance with cash out or refinancing your home for an amount greater than the amount you owe and using the extra cash to pay off debt.

Consolidating debt through a credit counseling agency or debt relief company usually requires payment of a setup fee and/or monthly fee. Using your home’s equity will also require payment of fees for the home equity loan or home equity line of credit.

The benefits of using debt consolidation are: reduced monthly payments, reduced finance charges, elimination of harassing calls from creditors, convenience of sending in one monthly payment, pay debt down faster, and freedom from stress, worry, and anxiety causes by being in debt. Home equity loans can also provide tax benefits. However, use caution when consolidating debt.

The disadvantages of using debt consolidation are: the costs of the loan may not be less than what you are currently paying, you could get a higher interest rate if you have bad credit or no collateral to secure the loan, the debt consolidation will be listed on your credit report and may lower your credit score, your credit may become worse if you do business with a non-reputable company, you risk losing your home if you get a home equity loan and miss a payment or make late payments and you may have to pay points for taking out the home equity loan.

It is best to use cautious when considering consolidating debt. Comparison shop to find the best deal. Start with credit unions that have more favorable loans and terms and find the option that is right for you.

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Student Loans

Students: Why Consolidate Student Loans

What is it?

When you consolidate student loans, you bundle all federal student loans that you receive to finance your college education into one. When a new loan is issued, the lender pays off the outstanding balances of the loans you consolidate. In short, it is a practical repayment management option for students.

Why Consolidate Student Loans?

People consolidate student loans to lower their monthly debt. When you consolidate, your original loan amount is paid off in full in return for a new loan for the combined balances. This new loan will have lower interest rate that is fixed for the life of the loan.

Advantages

When you consolidate student loans, you could reduce your monthly payments by upto 54 percent. Other advantages include reducing your interest rate by 1 percent after you maintain your on-time payment record for a certain period. Also, there are no pre-payment penalties on consolidated loans.

Final Say

Once you consolidate your student loans, it is gone and there is no going back. You can also consolidate only once. So, be sure that you make the best Financial move that you can make before plunging ahead.Also remember that you need to research a bit to find the best service that can be the most beneficial one for you.