Loan Consolidation Directory

Federal Student Loan Consolidation

Reducing loan payments through refinancing

Refinancing you student loans will usually reduce your monthly loan payments. There are many student loan consolidation programs offered by banks and other lending institutions for you to consider.

Before refinancing your student loans you need to examine your current situation. If you have federal student loans and private loans you may want to refinance them separately. Many student federal loans offer much lower interest rates than you can get privately. Private student loans are more or less personal loans. Lending institutions assume your income will increase with higher education. Consolidating your private student loans can save you a lot of money providing you can lower your interest rate. By combining your private and federal loans you will usually end up paying a higher interest rate on the combined principle. For this reason we usually recommend keeping the two loan type separate when refinancing or consolidating.

Student loan rates will vary by lender based on your personal credit rating or history. Knowing what is going to show up on your credit report is very important. You should review a copy of your credit report and take action to fix any problems that you find. If there are things you can not resolve you should be prepared to give a detailed account of these issues to the lender. You will obviously be compare rates from different lenders but you should also be aware of things beyond the interest rate. For example if you are paying closing costs to get a lower rate you may not actually be saving money so do the math. Rates on for refinancing federal student loans change once a year some time around July. Right now the rates are very low, but it's difficult to know how they will change as the economy changes.

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