Consolidating Federal and Private Student Loans Together...Possibly Ok?

[GWestphal]

I've got about 76K@~6% averaged in federal and about 31K@~3.6% averaged in private.

I ran across a couple companies that will allow MDs, JDs, and Engineers to consolidate private AND federal at pretty low rates (2.7-2.9% for variable tied to LIBOR, max of 8.95% or 3-5% for fixed).

I make about 80K now and at that range the IBR/PAYE systems don't really do much for me. As it would have me paying off everything within 20 years anyway (I work private sector, it's 10 yr for public sector IIRC). So that particular loan forgiveness doesn't seem like it will play a factor. I know some businesses have loan forgiveness as a benefit, do those generally require federal loans?

The LIBOR has been pretty stable ~1% for the last few years, and cutting my rate in half would be pretty great as well as only having one payment.

I know it's generally not recommended to consolidate private and federal, but in this case might be actually be a good idea? Or would you still recommend not combining them even if you half the rate?

 

[JM Aggie08]

I consolidated my federal using myfedloan.org and my private loans with custudentloans.

 

[OverVolt]

Wow that payment must be like my rent.

 

[GWestphal]

It is a small mortgage, ~700-800 per month, luckily some is subsidized and I'm not in repayment yet, so interest accrued is relatively small. But if I can get rates dropped in half that would decrease total interest payment pretty significantly. I'd like to pay it off in 2-3 years if possible, but 4-5 might be more likely unless my income increases markedly or I score a huge bonus or loan forgiveness of some sort.

 

[GWestphal]

Bump for any opinions.