Thursday, August 28, 2008

Private Student Loan Consolidation

What Are Your Student Loan Payment Options?
Student loans are common aids that students need these days to fund their college education. However, loans come at a price and are not as simple as grants and scholarships. Loans become your responsibility for years to come until you pay them off completely. Since it is a long-term issue, you must be very careful while selecting a program. Study the payment options and plans minutely and choose the one that has affordable interest rates and convenient payment methods. Most often repayment begins from 6 months after you graduate or after you get a job.

Different payment modes:

For a typical student loan, a certain amount is paid for a certain period of time, agreed upon previously. The payment period could be 5-15 years. However, there are many other methods of payment like, graduated, income-contingent and extended repayment. Both federal and private loans have these methods of repayment so as to lend flexibility to the programs and to enable students to pay off their loans without much trouble.
Debt consolidation

is another method of payment. People are not aware that student loans are in some ways considered personal loans and can be consolidated just like loans for car, housing, business etc. The biggest benefit it offers is that your payment burden is reduced because of consolidation of all outstanding loans into one account and enables you to clearly keep track of your money.

Prepare well:

Being alert to the cost of your loan from the very beginning is very important. Many loan companies offer loan payment calculators to students to help them balance out their payment and other expenses beforehand. When you are about to graduate you may be able to predict the salary that you might get. On the basis of this, you have to calculate a payment amount not exceeding one fifth of your salary.

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