School Loans are KILLING ME! Any Advice?

Question

Hello,

My big goal is to get into REI at some point (sooner than later). Before i do this i want to get all my personal finances in order. I'm currently 27 yrs old and have around 70k in school loans ranging from 4% -12% interest rated fixed and variable. I have great credit and need to find a way to get the interest rates down so i can start putting a dent in these things.

Can anyone offer up some advice who has experience (or not) with refinancing or consolidating school loans? I would really like to have them all rolled into one loan, with one payment, around 4% fixed interest. Is this possible? Which types of banks are best to use for this, credit unions, big banks like BOA or online banks?

Thanks for the help!

JJ Buckner · Answer

Hey Richard,

I am currently paying off my student loans as well before I get into REI. I have only been out of school for 6 months and my loans will be paid off within the next 5 to 6 months (I had roughly 35k in loans). The way I am doing this is by living on a written budget. I have a spreadsheet that I designate all of my finances for the month and do not go over the limit I set for each one. I try not to go out to eat that much (or any other useless spending) and put all that extra money towards my loans. The best advice I can give you is live on a written budget and try not to spend any money besides rent (or house payment), keeping the lights on, and other necessary bills. You will be shocked once you have a written budget and see how much useless spending you are actually doing when you account for every dollar you make.

To answer you question about consolidating your loans, you really won't find a bank or credit union that will give you the money on anything less than 10% interest. I tried this and also have very good credit. Best thing you can do is put all your extra money after bills are paid to loans and keep chugging along.

Best of luck!

Jim B. · Answer

You guys should check out Southern Financial (www.sofi.com)

My wife and I are about to go through them to refi our student loans to 15 or 20 year loans, even though we have between 4 and 6 years left of payments on them.  Our plan is by extending the loan terms out to that length of time, the minimum monthly payments will be much lower, but we'll still continue to pay the same amount on them as we are now in order to pay it off in the same amount of time.  By having the lower payments on paper, it should improve our D/I ratio pretty dramatically, therefor allowing us to qualify for higher mortgage amounts.

Terry Lewis · Answer

My daughter has $85,000 in student loans. She consolidated her loans from a service that the College she attended has. Now she bought 2 units in the north east with $1000 per month cash flow after all expenses. She borrowed the down payment from us and seller financing yes paying us interest. This $1000 per month will easily pay the debt service on her student loans.

Go to demographia.com and check out all the areas in the Northeast that are ripe for investment.

Terry

Go to demographia.com and check out all the areas in the Northeast that are ripe for investment.

Terry

Nathaniel S. · Answer

I tried to get refinancing with Sofi and they offered me a high 5% rate and I wasn't happy considering my rates were all 6.55 after autopay. I then found out about DRB and refinanced to 3.5% fixed over 5 years...its 4.5% for 10 years fixed. They only refinance certain professions so you have to be one of them. Google DRB student loan refinancing. If you decide to use them I would appreciate being able to reference you so I can get a quick easy $200. just let me know before filling out paperwork if so.

Thanks and hope you qualify

School Loans are KILLING ME! Any Advice?

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