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Post by ahall005 on Mar 8, 2017 21:15:47 GMT -6
Does anyone on here have any experience with consolidating student loans? Is it a good idea? How do you go about doing it?
I currently make payments on three different loans a month. Private and Federal.
Any info would be much appreciated
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Post by jared10227 on Mar 8, 2017 23:30:16 GMT -6
Does anyone on here have any experience with consolidating student loans? Is it a good idea? How do you go about doing it? I currently make payments on three different loans a month. Private and Federal. Any info would be much appreciated Coach, I'm gonna be folowing your post. My wife and I both are just finishing our masters degrees. Hers is completely finished and I will be finishing mine in early June. Therefore we will be paying 5-6 different loans totaling about $1,400 a month. Between coaching football and baseball, driving an hour to school everyday, and taking our 13yo all over the Southeast for baseball tournaments, etc...I haven't had a chance to do my research yet. However, if there isn't a good solution posted by June, I wiLL definitely be finding one, and will share every thing I find with CoachHuey.com
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Post by Chris Clement on Mar 9, 2017 6:18:01 GMT -6
Are you looking to restructure to lower your payments or just simplify the process?
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Post by ahall005 on Mar 9, 2017 6:36:47 GMT -6
Definitely looking to lower payments if posssible
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coacht
Sophomore Member
Posts: 221
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Post by coacht on Mar 9, 2017 7:51:02 GMT -6
Have you looked into any forgiveness programs? Certain districts qualify if you teach specific subjects. I know our district qualifies for $5,000 forgiveness regardless of what you teach. But I teach SPED so I qualify for up to $17,000 forgiven. So I have to teach SPED for at least two more years and I get my masters completely forgiven. You'd be surprised what districts qualify, I know nearly everyone in our area does. This might be something you guys have already looked into, just trying to help.
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Post by gccwolverine on Mar 9, 2017 7:54:12 GMT -6
Definitely looking to lower payments if posssible Your federal loans... You won't have a problem with. They will lower your payments and work with you to get it to something manageable. Now your private loans? Your F'd. They are what they are. Speaking from experience.
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Post by ahall005 on Mar 9, 2017 8:18:59 GMT -6
Have you looked into any forgiveness programs? Certain districts qualify if you teach specific subjects. I know our district qualifies for $5,000 forgiveness regardless of what you teach. But I teach SPED so I qualify for up to $17,000 forgiven. So I have to teach SPED for at least two more years and I get my masters completely forgiven. You'd be surprised what districts qualify, I know nearly everyone in our area does. This might be something you guys have already looked into, just trying to help. Where do you look for this info?
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coacht
Sophomore Member
Posts: 221
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Post by coacht on Mar 9, 2017 8:23:06 GMT -6
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Post by fcboiler87 on Mar 9, 2017 8:23:41 GMT -6
Consolidating them is best if at all possible. I did it for mine and my wife's. We paid ours off fairly quickly, but we still wanted one manageable payment in the mean time before doing so. However, we did not have to do federal AND private. That could make for a complicated situation. I've seen a lot of publicity on SoFi, a lender organization whose primary claim is to refinancing your student loans at a better interest rate than is currently out there. You may check with them and see how they can help you. Otherwise, combining private and federal could get difficult or impossible. At very minimum, combine any federal ones you may have.
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Post by coachcb on Mar 9, 2017 9:41:15 GMT -6
1. Yes, you need to consolidate them so you aren't paying multiple interest rates at once. Consolidate under a program that gives you a reasonable interest rate and go from there. You don't want to be paying 4% on a couple of loans, 3% on a few others but be able to consolidate them all at around 3%.
2. Get on some kind of loan forgiveness program if you're a teacher. I'm operating under two right now: one for teachers and one for math/science teachers in a rural area.
3. Find an income based repayment program. I have fought with the loan companies several times under these programs as they'll still try to hit me with payments that are higher than I can afford. I can't speak for all loan groups but mine basically haggled with me initially. Their first repayment program was basically their highest "bid". I made payments that I could afford, they b-tched and I told them that I could either keep making payments at those amounts or I could default. They found special "loop holes" for me (yeah, right...) and knocked my payments down. They'd still get their money if I defaulted (garnishment of wages) but it's a PITA for them to go through that process. I have actually done this twice with two different companies and it worked each time.
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Post by coachbdud on Mar 9, 2017 10:04:12 GMT -6
Does anyone on here have any experience with consolidating student loans? Is it a good idea? How do you go about doing it? I currently make payments on three different loans a month. Private and Federal. Any info would be much appreciated make reading thepennyhoarder.com a part of your life great site... lots of financial info they do a lot of posts about how people deal with student debt i scroll through things every day and click on an article or two
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Post by Coach Vint on Mar 9, 2017 14:18:45 GMT -6
My consolidated loans did NOT qualify for forgiveness. I have app,ISD for over 30 different programs. Never qualified for any of them. Winning the lottery is my best hope of ever paying off my loans.
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Post by ahall005 on Mar 9, 2017 21:07:00 GMT -6
My consolidated loans did NOT qualify for forgiveness. I have app,ISD for over 30 different programs. Never qualified for any of them. Winning the lottery is my best hope of ever paying off my loans. As far as I know private loans (through Sallie Mae) can't be consolidated anyway correct?
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Post by wiscohscoach on Mar 9, 2017 21:41:35 GMT -6
Sell your private loans to a credit union, way way lower interest rates. I went through Lendkey, they're really awesome about it
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