It has become increasingly expensive to finance a university education, graduates pushing deeper into debt. Although the average graduate leaves school with $ 21,000 in debt, a growing number of students leaving school with more than 40,000 U.S. dollars in loans, which will struggle to repay a decade or more. Even if you do not finish college for any reason, you still have to pay your student loans. Assuming you have $ 21,000 in Stafford loans, willpay about $ 241 a month to fix the debt. If this amount exceeds 10% of monthly income, then you may have trouble meeting your monthly payments and qualify for federal student loan consolidation.
Federal student loan consolidation will combine Stafford loans, Perkins loans and PLUS loans into a fixed rate loan that reduces your monthly payments as you pay it back over alonger period of time (ten to thirty years). Using the above example, the monthly payments will drop to about $ 136 if the debt consolidation extends the repayment period to thirty years. By merging the different types of loans, debt consolidation will be divided into loans and not grants, but will still make a monthly payment. You can also reduce the interest rate of 0.6%, consolidating your loans during the graceperiod before beginning repayment. Also note that Stafford and PLUS loans before July 2006 because interest rates are variable, the consolidation will give you a fixed rate loan.
On the other hand, with the Federal student loan consolidation, you will end up spending more money to repay debts. For example, a child of ten, $ 21,000 loan, you will pay about $ 8,000 in interest, when you extend the term of the loan in thirty years,the total interest payable will be approximately $ 28,000. But you can address this problem by increasing your monthly payments, because there are no penalties for excessive consolidation loans.
However, federal student loan consolidation allows a variety of repayment plans, including a graduated repayment plan that increases your monthly payments every two years, an income contingent plan that pegs the monthly payments to factors such as annual income,family size and balance of direct loans and income-based repayment (IBR) plan for borrowers that are experiencing partial financial hardship. If you are eligible for IBR plan, payments may not be sufficient to repay the full amount for the duration of the loan, if this is the case, the remaining amount not paid will be waived. However, if you opt for IBR is no longer possible to switch to other repayment repayments different standards.