In today’s academic world the majority of students have in excess of $20,000 worth of student debt by the time they graduate from college. This significant amount of money may naturally make life difficult at a time when you may have no job to go to or initially a low-paying job as your first step on the career ladder. Often the student debt will be spread across a number of different loans, possibly both federal and private and there is a need to manage the debt sensibly and to ensure that you pay as little interest as possible over the term of the loans.

Consolidation of student loans is a natural step to take to manage this issue, although you must not consolidate federal and private loans into one loan, otherwise you will lose your federal benefits, such as deferment or subsidized rates. Anyone who took out federal Stafford Loans, Federal Direct Loans and Perkins Loans while attending college is eligible to apply for federal student loan consolidation.

6 Reasons to Consolidate Your Student Loans

* Rather than standard 10 year loan terms, a consolidated loan can be stretched over 30 years, if necessary, allowing you to significantly reduce your monthly payments – by up to 50% – at a time when finances are tight. This in turn leaves you with more money to meet day-to-day expenses.

* By reducing your monthly payments, this can lower your debt to income ratio and therefore improve your credit score.

* Interest rates are currently as low as they have ever been and therefore you could fix your monthly re-payments at a very low interest rate.

* A consolidated loan leaves you with only one loan to manage – this is more manageable, less stressful and importantly leaves you feeling more in control of your finances.

* Most consolidated student loans do not carry penalty charges for early repayment, so that as your career progresses and you are able to pay off bigger chunks of your loan, you will not be penalized for doing so.

* Since July 1 2009 students may be eligible to take advantage of a new government program that bases the student loan repayments on income.

Therefore, if you currently have eligible federal student loans, totaling in excess of $20,000, the loans are not in default, and the borrower has graduated or is enrolled less than half-time, then it makes a lot of sense to apply for a consolidated loan.

By: Peter R. B.

Student loans without cosigner are possible to get. Now, students looking for no cosigner loans will probably take out federal loans at first. Federal loans, of which the Stafford and Perkins loans, comprise. It’s possible for students to pay for college just with these two types of loans. Now, if you intend to pay for college with federal loans, you need to be prepared for the possibility that federal loans won’t cover the full cost of your education. What do you do in this case?

The solution is to take out private loans. Some of the more popular private student loans are chase loans and signature student loans. The requirements for private loans are that you either have good credit or you have a cosigner. Now you may ask why take out a private student loan when you can actually get a federal student loan which is no cosigner and has no credit check.

The reason is that private loans may offer better interest rates and loan terms if you have good credit or you have a cosigner with good credit. Thus it may be a better deal for you to look at getting a private loan. The other option, and this is a common option, is if you don’t have enough federal loan funding to pay for college. If this is the case, then you will need to get loans without cosigner that are private. Now your option if you are looking for private student loans without cosigner is to get a bad credit loan – these have high interest though, so be wary.

By: Jon Snow

If you have several different loans all due to different days, you have no doubt realized how difficult it is to keep track of them. Since most college students are working hard at their new career that they spent several years studying for, it can become very stressful to try to stay on top of due dates for five loans or more.

You can greatly reduce the amount of time and stress that goes into paying your student loan debt each month by means of student loan consolidation. The student loan consolidation process fuses all of your debts into one loan. That way, you will only have one due date each month to worry about.

Student Loan Consolidation: What to Think About Beforehand

It is true that student loan consolidation is an attractive prospect to individuals who owe money on several different student loans. Remember, though, that there are pros and cons to every financial decision. Doing some research into student loan consolidation will allow you to make sure that your new consolidation loan terms are better than those of your current student loans.

You should thoroughly investigate all the details of the student loan consolidation process before you agree to make all of your student loans into just one consolidation loan. Since each lending institution that handles student loan consolidation will have a different offer, compare them, especially the interest rates. You want the best payment scheme and lowest interest rate possible.

It would also be wise to try to negotiate the terms of your loan, including the interest rate, before you sign a consolidation agreement. You should be able to get a great loan with a very low interest rate if you are able to prove that you have paid your previous debts in a timely manner and your credit score is good.

The bank or financial institution which you work with wants to get as many good customers as they can. So if your credit is in good order, you can expect to be catered to when it comes to your consolidation loan terms. The negotiation process will be more difficult for you if your credit score is not so good.

By: Michael Geoffrey