There is another good deal around:

educationalloancompany.com

They give you 0.5% immediately for EFT.
Then, an additional 1% after 24 payments.


I wonder how you guys compare this to IDAPP.

Also, a question:

I've about $17.5K in Staford Subsidised and $7.5K is Perkins (@5%) (Single loan).
Consolidating Staford Subsidised loans only gives me 3.375% (-bonuses).
Consolidating all of them together gives me 3.875% (-bonuses).

What would you do in my shoes?

Thanks for replying!

I've the following:
1. Staford Subsidised 3.620% $2625
2. Staford Subsidised 3.620% $3500
3. Staford Subsidised 3.620% $5500
4. Staford Subsidised 2.820% $5500
5. Federal Perkins 5.000% $7200

I am in no hurry to pay them off.
Since the fixed rate will be significantly less than a resoanable market return after taxes over the course of the 20 years, I'd rather invest the money than pay off this loan.

What do you think my best consolidation option/strategy would be?


Also, a very separate question.
On this thread there had beed floated an idea of paying more than the minimum to get to the required number of payments to get a 1% discount. Because of the way I think the payments work, it seems to be counterproductive, though. This is how I understand this:

If one is paying more than the required payment, the bank can apply the extra payment either "to principal" or "to future payments". If the bank is applying that extra money "to principal", I find it very hard to believe that they'll also count it for you as "an additional payment". If the bank is applying the payment "to future payments", then, of course, they will be happy to count this as an extra payment.

In the latter case, I do not see where you are winning money, though. Your "extra payment" applied "to future payments" is "part interest, part principal". Hence, you end up paying the interest for the time that you did not even keep the money. So it looks like you are robbing yourself and giving the interest to the bank for free.

Thanks for the good thread.

My wife has three perkins loans left, totalling a whopping $4500 at 5% fixed. All are held by https://www.myamsloan.com/ . The amount is so small that I haven't bothered thoroughly researching it...I recall being told by someone a few years back that we couldn't consolidate because they were all perkins loans...

I gather from this thread that this isn't true?

It also seems like our options for good deals would be limited with such a low loan amount.

I'm tempted to just pay them off with our HELOC, more because it shows a $115 a month debt obligation (hurting or debt to income ratio) than because we'd save any cash (5% fixed tax-deductible isn't bad.)

Would welcome suggestions on this...

okay, i've read through the thread, and have a few questions. the loans are my husband's, so please forgive my cluelessness.

my husband and i make over $120k/year combined. we're pushing the limit (or may be over?) for getting the interest on his student loans as a tax deduction. here are our current stats:

total loans: somewhere around $120,000
most are sallie mae, three are with AES (american educational service)
the rates are different for each loan, but most are somewhere between 3-5%.
i think they've been consolidated once before, but i'm not sure.
we own a house, and owe about $278,000 on it. i think we could get it appraised for close to $400,000.
our monthly payments are about $600. we tend to overpay them a little, bringing our total monthly payments to $700.
we have a very small (~5k) savings account and a little bit of manageable credit card debt that revolves every month. but we live almost paycheck to paycheck, with our mortgage, day care expenses, car payment and insurances. we dont have a lot of wiggle room.

so the questions:
what IS the story with sallie mae? they do consolidate, even though they'll tell you that they wont?
should i look into a home equity loan? we may not be able to deduct that interest due to our income. will i be able to get a HE loan with our current loan to value ratio? is it worth it to get a smaller HE loan and pay off SOME of the loans, leaving the rest for monthly payments?
should we try to consolidate now, or wait until we figure out the HE deal?
what happens if we decide to move and we have a $100,000 HE loan? if we go this route, are we stuck in our current house?

thanks for any advice.

~fiasco

massfiasco said:so the questions:
what IS the story with sallie mae? they do consolidate, even though they'll tell you that they wont?
should i look into a home equity loan? we may not be able to deduct that interest due to our income. will i be able to get a HE loan with our current loan to value ratio? is it worth it to get a smaller HE loan and pay off SOME of the loans, leaving the rest for monthly payments?
should we try to consolidate now, or wait until we figure out the HE deal?
what happens if we decide to move and we have a $100,000 HE loan? if we go this route, are we stuck in our current house?

thanks for any advice.
~fiasco
It's impossible to know about every type of the loan. But generally you can consolidate if
1) you have more than one loan
or
2) you have not consolidated before

There are exceptions, some companies allow you to consolidate just one loan even if it was previously consolidated.

may be Sallie May's loans have some special rules, that don't allow consolidation, but I doubt it.
Find a lender whith which lender you would like to consolidate call them and ask. That's the best way to find out wether you can consolidate or not. Give them as much details as possible so that they can give you correct answer (i.e. tell them loan amounts, weteher your loans are already consolidated, who are your lenders etc...). If they say that they can consolidate the loans, then it does not matter what Sallie May tells you. Sallie May will just get a check for the full loan balance from them and from that point on, your business with Sallie May will be over.
If they won't let you consolidate Sallie may loans, try different combinations
Sallie May and AES loans, or consolidate just AES loans...
With the loan balance like yours, lenders should be interested in consolidation.

Since it sounds like you have trouble making payments, when you consolidate select the repayment plan with the lowest monthly payment... you can always pay more a month if you have $.
Also, you may be able to request deferment/foberance on your loans(regardless of wether you will consolidate them or not). You'll end up paying interest only or nothing for 1 year.

If you want to consolidate and requrest deferment/foberance check weather you'll be able to consolidate the loans which are in deferment/foberance... and act accordingly.

hope this makes sense... let me know if any of my explanations are confusing and need clarification.

I will!

What's the handicap? What's the wager?

I put my money on "next year they will be LOWER".

TerpBE said:I posted this in another thread, but might be appropriate here:

I have two student loans that a couple of weeks ago were under different lenders. Yesterday I checked my account online, and now they show up as having the same lender! I'm guessing that the one lender bought my other loan without anyone telling me.

I have been looking to consolidate my loans, and I was given a list of 10-15 companies I could use. However, now that I only have one lender, I can only consolidate through them! They don't offer as good of a deal as some of the other companies I was looking at, so I'll end up spending an extra couple of hundred dollars by consolidating through them.

Has anybody else been in a similar situation? Can they really lock you into consolidating with one lender, even if you initially had more than one? Do I have any other options, or am I screwed?

Don't trust your current lender. They want you $, so they may tell you that you can't consolidate just because of that.
Look at the intial post in this tread, find a lender with which you wouuld like to consolidate, call them and ask if they will allow to consolidate. Repeat until you find a lender that says "Yes"

Good luck!

PS If you find out that your lender's loans are REALLY impossible to consolidate,
please post your lender's name in this thread to help other people avoid the problems(and the lender).

Why are you guys asking the same question over and over again...
"Can I consolidate my loan?"
nobody can read your mind to see what types of loans you have and what are the loan terms.
call companies who consolidate student loans and ask... it's not difficult... and the phone # are 1-800, so you won't even have to pay for the call.

When you and your fiance get married, you can consolidate your loans with anyone again.

kaiotes said:are you being sarcastic or what? whats the reasoning behind this?

igorlord said:When you and your fiance get married, you can consolidate your loans with anyone again.
if you have just one loan and you already consolidate it - your consolidation options are limited. (only two companies I know of will let you consolidate just one loan if it was already consolidated).
But you can consolidate your spouse's loan with yours. If loans are big enough (10-15 at least) then most companies will let you consolidate them. I.e. you have more options and can choose better incentive (i.e. interes rate reduction)