A Few Insights Into Federal Student Loan Debt Consolidation

Student loans that are obtained from the government are guaranteed by the government and so if you are thinking about federal student loan debt consolidation, any existing loans that you may have can be closed by the loan consolidation company or even by the Department of Education though in this instance it depends on the type of federal student loan you hold. For student loan debt consolidation, the interest rates for the consolidation will be based on your loan rate for the year and that in turn is dependent on the ninety-one day Treasury bill rate applicable at the last auction in the month of May for each year.

Student Loan Rates

The rate on your student loan may change somewhat and will fluctuate from the present low rate of 4.7 percent and reach as high as 8.25 percent in the case of federal Stafford loans, and it is nine percent for PLUS loans. If you are thinking about student loan debt consolidation in the current period you can consolidate one time with a private lender and then consolidate again with the Department of Education.

Once the student loan debt consolidation goes through, you may need to pay a fixed rate of interest that is set depending on the current interest rate, though you should be aware that by reconsolidating your student loan, this rate will not change. Sometimes, you may find it expedient to combine loans that are of various types and also rates that can make for a single student loan debt consolidation. In such an instance, the weighted average calculation will be used to find the appropriate rate of interest that in turn will depend on current rate of interest on the various loans that are being consolidated into one.

It is common to refer to federal student loan debt consolidation as being refinancing though this is not exactly correct since the rates of interest on loans will not change and are in fact just locked in. What's more, student loan debt consolidation is not like private sector debt consolidation because it does not invite any fees that you will have to pay, which is good news for you because private companies get to earn money when they allow you to go in for student loan debt consolidation since they then can get subsidies from the government.

The bottom line is that student loan debt consolidation can benefit the student and his or her credit rating though it is important to realize that not every federal student loan debt consolidation company reports these loans to credit bureaus.