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Best way to consolidate student loans?

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archcommus

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I'm graduating in April and have my fair share of student loans. Got a bunch of Stafford subs, Stafford unsubs, and a couple random Perkins loans and such. Most of the interest rates are 6.x%. I'm curious what the best way is to go about consolidating these so I only have one or two different monthly payments and with the best interest rate. AES provides a way to do it right on their site but I'm not sure that would be getting the best "deal" (if there are even rate deals to be had). Any info would help, thanks!
 
Because all of your interest rates are fixed, I don't think there is any real "deal" for you to get out of this in terms of interest rates. In fact, consolidating your loans might actually raise the interest rate since they typically round up to the nearest 0.25%.

You might try reading this FW thread on student loan consolidation, although it doesn't seem to be updated as frequently anymore. It seems many of the student loan consolidation deals have dried up in the wake of the credit crisis:

link
 
I checked around last month, I wasn't able to find any deals on consolidation. Up until the economy bottomed out last year, there were a fair amount of deals out there...but like an idiot I decided to wait until I paid for my last semester of school before doing a consolidation (this would be my third consolidation overall). I've decided just to keep the loans separate so I don't lose all the perks from my earlier consolidation. From what everyone told me, until the economy improves, the federal government is really the only one offering consolidations at this point.

(I only have subsidized loans, so not sure if that applies directly to your situation)

FatWallet has a good thread on this:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forum...key=y&keyword1=student

(edit - as SpecialK already pointed out).
 
Originally posted by: Special K
Because all of your interest rates are fixed, I don't think there is any real "deal" for you to get out of this in terms of interest rates. In fact, consolidating your loans might actually raise the interest rate since they typically round up to the nearest 0.25%.

You might try reading this FW thread on student loan consolidation, although it doesn't seem to be updated as frequently anymore. It seems many of the student loan consolidation deals have dried up in the wake of the credit crisis:

link
Click to expand...

I figured that might be the case, I checked out Direct Loans that they mentioned in the FW thread, I did the calculation and according to that I'd be able to get everything down to 6.375%. Considering most of them are at 6.8% right now that could be a slight improvement. Doing it through AES would be easier, I have no idea what the resulting rate would be though.
 
Call them up and check what AES would be. If you have a decent amount of loans the change from 6.8 to 6.375 is worth the trouble as long as there aren't any fees or anything for consolidating. Also, student loans often have reductions in interest rates if you use automatic payment and pay on time for a certain number of months.
 
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