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I know that a while ago they created a program that allowed people to consolidate their FFELP loans (even if they were already consolidated) into Direct loans to become eligible for Direct programs, however I'm not certain if that's still applicable. It wouldn't hurt to call them and ask a representative. You want to ask two things: 1. can you do it and 2. if you do, will that make you eligible for PAYE.
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Mar 31, 2013 13:23
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Is there a way to have Kwikpay debit your account every two weeks (with half of a month's payment on each one) instead of once a month? My understanding is that it would save money over time due to how interest compounds, and it would also amount to 13 "monthly" payments in a single calendar year, thus paying loans off that much more quickly. I know how to set this up with my bank, but I worry that deactivating Kwikpay would cancel out the 0.25% interest rate reduction I get by using that particular service. 
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Mar 31, 2013 18:51
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Ana Kasparian-lead panel discussion on student loans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0xGSXhb8Bk
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Apr 2, 2013 01:47
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Is there any way to pay off a single loan on Sallie Mae's website without making your entire next monthly payment as well? I feel like I'm going to have to do this via mail because their website just can't contemplate what I'm attempting to do. I have autopay set up so I feel like it's somehow screwing with things.
mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 22:35
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GFBeach posted:Is there a way to have Kwikpay debit your account every two weeks (with half of a month's payment on each one) instead of once a month? My understanding is that it would save money over time due to how interest compounds, and it would also amount to 13 "monthly" payments in a single calendar year, thus paying loans off that much more quickly. I know how to set this up with my bank, but I worry that deactivating Kwikpay would cancel out the 0.25% interest rate reduction I get by using that particular service. Unfortunately no, the systems that servicers use don't allow this. It's certainly a drawback of the system. You can, however, always send extra payments on your own. Personally, I would run the numbers using the bi-monthly payments versus what you're saving with the 0.25% reduction so that you can see, money-wise, which saves you more. My money would be on the split payments, but I haven't run numbers myself to confirm that. FRINGE posted:Ana Kasparian-lead panel discussion on student loans. Thank you for sharing! Student loan debt is becoming a hot button issue, as even though it's not quite as big as the housing bubble, it IS a bubble that will burst at some point and take a good chunk of the economy with it. It's a real issue. Not to mention rising education costs and the woeful inability of the government to stop those costs from rising, thus leading to more private education loans, thus leading to more debt, etc. etc. mastershakeman posted:Is there any way to pay off a single loan on Sallie Mae's website without making your entire next monthly payment as well? I feel like I'm going to have to do this via mail because their website just can't contemplate what I'm attempting to do. I have autopay set up so I feel like it's somehow screwing with things. Unfortunately I've not used SLMA's site, but my suspicion is no. If it's not easily available on the site, it's probably not an option. Mailing and indicating which loan the payment should go to is the better route to go.
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Apr 5, 2013 23:20
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Wiggy Marie posted:Unfortunately no, the systems that servicers use don't allow this. It's certainly a drawback of the system. You can, however, always send extra payments on your own. Personally, I would run the numbers using the bi-monthly payments versus what you're saving with the 0.25% reduction so that you can see, money-wise, which saves you more. My money would be on the split payments, but I haven't run numbers myself to confirm that.
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Apr 6, 2013 23:10
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Dik Hz posted:Eh. All it would take is for private student loans to be dischargable in bankruptcy. The system would be fixed overnight. The system that grew out of the ashes of the old system after it blew up Hindenburg style would be a "fixed" in the sense that the smart students would start borrowing everything they can before strategically defaulting, resulting in government expenditures skyrocketing exponentially as the universities realize that the only cost ceiling is the maximum lending amounts for the government backed loans. This would lead to effective total subsidization of university costs in the US. Edit: just realized you said only private student loans. If only the private loans were dischargeable, this would result in no more private loans being given, which wouldn't really help as just maxing out the government lending limits for undergrad plus grad can still totally sink a person making a good middle class income for decades.
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Apr 7, 2013 05:29
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Great Lakes says my grace period is over on April 10th but I still haven't received anything in the mail. Is that not an exact due date, then, and my due date will be revealed to me eventually?
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Apr 7, 2013 07:03
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Wiggy Marie posted:Unfortunately no, the systems that servicers use don't allow this. It's certainly a drawback of the system. You can, however, always send extra payments on your own. Personally, I would run the numbers using the bi-monthly payments versus what you're saving with the 0.25% reduction so that you can see, money-wise, which saves you more. My money would be on the split payments, but I haven't run numbers myself to confirm that. I compared figures and while I can't seem to find an exact amount (not helped by the fact that the servicing company does a great job hiding just how much you actually owe and how payments are divvied up), it looks like the savings from bi-weekly payments are many times higher than the savings of monthly payments with the 0.25% discount on your interest rate. Thanks for your help! GFBeach fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Apr 7, 2013 |
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Apr 7, 2013 18:26
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Is it illegal to use federal student loan money to pay off private student loans to consolidate your loans over time to be all federal and then go on IBR
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Apr 7, 2013 19:38
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You don't have to turn off auto-pay to make manual payments. When I make extra payments, it pushes the my next auto debit out into the future. If you want to make two half payments, make one 3 weeks before your due date, and one 1 week before. I schedule my payments on the servicer's website so I can specify how I want it divided. One of my loans ($0.65 Balance due) has the next auto pay scheduled 5 years from now. My own question: Do I need to make another payment to take care of the $.65? I tried to pay off that loan about a month ago, and after the payment went through I had that much left.
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Apr 7, 2013 19:45
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Guy Axlerod posted:You don't have to turn off auto-pay to make manual payments. ...Huh. I may give that a shot, then. If sending a payment from my bank (versus via the loan handler's site) offsets the due date, that might be the best of both worlds as I could set up a an automated two-week payment schedule through my bank.
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Apr 7, 2013 21:32
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Sallie Mae just sent my yearly renewal notice for IBR. Question - my AGI on last year's tax return was higher than what I currently make because it factored in vacation/holiday time that I was paid on top of my salary. Instead of providing them with my 2012 tax return, can I submit my current pay stubs as Alternative Documentation of Income? By doing that, I'd end up saving like $20/month in IBR payments since my weekly salary x 52 weeks is a lesser figure than last year's AGI on my tax return.
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Apr 8, 2013 06:40
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sorry if this question has been asked before, but can you start paying off parts of your loan while still attending school? [Subsidized loan if that makes a difference]
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Apr 8, 2013 20:25
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Hat Butt posted:sorry if this question has been asked before, but can you start paying off parts of your loan while still attending school? [Subsidized loan if that makes a difference] Yes and you should do so if at all possible. Your loan will have zero interest while you're in school so getting a head start will greatly aid you in repaying it once the inevitable deferment time is up. Compound interest is the greatest force in the universe after all so it's best you don't have to fight it for as long. George H.W. Cunt fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Apr 8, 2013 |
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Apr 8, 2013 20:48
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SaltLick posted:Yes and you should do so if at all possible. so,when i go to the fedloan site and go to make a payment it says 0.00 is due, but i should still be able to make a payment right?
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Apr 8, 2013 21:06
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Hat Butt posted:sorry if this question has been asked before, but can you start paying off parts of your loan while still attending school? [Subsidized loan if that makes a difference] Do not listen to SaltLick, there is no point in paying off subsidized loans while you are in school. You would do better putting that money even in a savings account, and a treasury bill mutual fund would be even better if a little more difficult to set up, and then also to deal with come tax time.
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Apr 8, 2013 21:10
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To elaborate, no interest is charged on a subsidized federal loan while you are in school. If you take the money you plan on paying into your loan and put it into a savings account it will earn interest. On the day before your loan will start accruing interest (Graduation + 6 months), you could then put the money from your savings account + the interest you have earned towards the loan. It takes a bit of discipline to not touch that money, but you could be giving up a decent amount of money by paying down the loan today. If you do decide to pay down the loan, it should let you even though you don't actually have a payment due today. Guy Axlerod fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Apr 9, 2013 |
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Apr 8, 2013 22:08
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Pandybear posted:I posted earlier regarding medical school loans. My servicer is fed loan and they denied my request for Pay As You Earn because "Your Federal Family Education Loan Program loans are not eligible for PAYE." I understand I'm supposed to have direct loans... So is there anyway I can change these loans? If so, how? Thanks! Not for PAYE. If you had a loan disbursed prior to 2008, you don't qualify for it. PAYE is great if you can get it, but the requirements are pretty strict for it. samizdat posted:Great Lakes says my grace period is over on April 10th but I still haven't received anything in the mail. Is that not an exact due date, then, and my due date will be revealed to me eventually? With us, the grace period ends generally 31-59 days before a payment is due. Check out their website, Great Lakes has what is widely considered to be the best website for the student loan servicers, it should be useful. If it's not, call them, email or chat with them. Guy Axlerod posted:You don't have to turn off auto-pay to make manual payments. Be careful with making the payments and not expecting the auto debit to pull. A lot of servicer's auto debit systems need 5 business days before the payment is pulled to be able to stop the auto debit payment. As for the $.65, if you just make a general payment, your loan servicer is almost certainly going to put that payment towards a loan that is actually accruing interest, as opposed to that loan which is probably accruing about $.00023 cents a day. In any case, I wouldn't bother with it. That tradeline for that loan, aka what's on your credit report, is showing that you still have debt that's current, and it's really not costing you any interest. Nor is it hurting your debt to income ratio. Guy Axlerod posted:To elaborate, no interest is charged on a subsidized federal loan while you are in school. I understand where you're coming from with this, but if someone has a Grad Plus loan with a 7.9% interest rate, I'd vote for paying that sucker down over a savings account. Those loans are nasty.
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Apr 9, 2013 02:58
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My husband is still I'm grad school and his loans are both sub and unsub (but all federal). I'd like to start making payments on this (almost 100k) mountain of debt, but will this take them out of deferment? When we called to see about payment, they said we couldn't just apply it to one loan, that they would distribute across all of them. Is that true? Ideally I'd like to knock out some of the unsubsidized first.
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Apr 9, 2013 04:46
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As far as paying of interest as soon as possible, does it make sense to do so when you plan getting IBR or PAYE and also plan on taking advantage of the public service loan forgiveness?
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Apr 9, 2013 11:34
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Eris posted:My husband is still I'm grad school and his loans are both sub and unsub (but all federal). I'd like to start making payments on this (almost 100k) mountain of debt, but will this take them out of deferment? Paying will not take them out out deferment at all. And they should actually be able to apply the payment to the unsubsidized loans, or to whichever one that you want for that matter. There is no real reason for them to not do that, so long as your loans are current and there's no payment due within the next 30 days. Stumpus posted:As far as paying of interest as soon as possible, does it make sense to do so when you plan getting IBR or PAYE and also plan on taking advantage of the public service loan forgiveness? Absolutely. There's really no other reason to do PSLF unless you're doing IBR or PAYE, honestly.
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Apr 9, 2013 19:32
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Effexxor posted:Absolutely. There's really no other reason to do PSLF unless you're doing IBR or PAYE, honestly. What I mean is, does it make any sense to pay off interest that is currently accruing when I am going to be participating in those programs? The way I look at it, under PSLF and IBR, I'll pay a total of ~35k before the government pays off the rest. Seeing as that is roughly half of what I paid in loans to go to school, it seems like it doesn't make sense to invest any of my income into the loans currently.
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Apr 9, 2013 22:01
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Eris posted:When we called to see about payment, they said we couldn't just apply it to one loan, that they would distribute across all of them. Is that true? Ideally I'd like to knock out some of the unsubsidized first. They may attempt to do this. As soon as the payment posts, call customer service and tell them you want to apply the entire loan amount to a specific loan. You may have to do this every payment, however.
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Apr 10, 2013 01:07
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baquerd posted:They may attempt to do this. As soon as the payment posts, call customer service and tell them you want to apply the entire loan amount to a specific loan. You may have to do this every payment, however. This is my annoying fear. In addition to the babysitting, I'll likely have to physically mail in a check, right?
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Apr 10, 2013 01:28
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baquerd posted:Edit: just realized you said only private student loans. If only the private loans were dischargeable, this would result in no more private loans being given, which wouldn't really help as just maxing out the government lending limits for undergrad plus grad can still totally sink a person making a good middle class income for decades.
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Apr 10, 2013 01:38
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Effexxor, as usual you save the thread from horrific delays in my replies. Thank you! In general replies across the board: although I understand the savings account theory, are there any savings accounts worth it? The only ones I've been able to find with interest rates that aren't terrible are - nevermind, I haven't found any, including at local credit unions. Normally you need a high balance to start qualifying for good interest rates. Are there any accounts that could be recommended? As someone who's worked in student loan servicing, I will still always recommend paying off the loan before anything else. Because once it's paid off you can focus instead on saving, and never worry about repaying the blasted thing. Trust me, the best laid plans fall through all the time, especially for college grads. Get rid of something that could negatively impact you in the future if you can. That's not to say the savings and interest accrual idea isn't a good idea. It's just not what I recommend, only because I have talked with too many students who had the best intentions only for horrible life events to throw their plans off. Thread Update Guys and gals, I have news. I will no longer be working with my servicer, which means my knowledge of this topic is going to fall dramatically, especially in regards to biz updates. I would like to keep this thread open (or start a new one), but someone else will have to officially take up the torch because I don't want to be giving out dated information. Effexxor, I wanted to ask if you might be willing to do so? You can PM me if you have any questions!
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Apr 10, 2013 14:08
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Effexxor posted:With us, the grace period ends generally 31-59 days before a payment is due. Check out their website, Great Lakes has what is widely considered to be the best website for the student loan servicers, it should be useful. If it's not, call them, email or chat with them. It's semi useful, when I look at my loans it says, "Account Status: Repayment" now (before it said "Grace") but also says, "Although no payment is due at this time, you may continue to make payments on this account." (I've never made payments on these accounts. I'm also going back to school in June and will need to get a deferment after I start paying, which I hope won't take too much time.) There's no due date or minimum payment amounts listed, just information like the total amount of my loans and how much I'd have to pay to pay them off fully as of April 11th, 2013.
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Apr 11, 2013 08:20
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I read the first few pages (don't have the time to go through the entire topic, sorry!) to see if this was addressed but either it wasn't, or I'm too dumb and inexperienced with loans to understand it. I'm starting grad school in the fall and will have to take out loans to pay for the majority of it. About 55k each year to cover tuition + living expenses + other necessities. I filled my financial aid info in along with the rest of the application, and when I received my acceptance I also was notified that I qualified for the maximum Stafford unsubsidized loan of $20,500. A good friend who went through law school and is managing loan repayment for both himself and his fiancee advised caution, and said that I should look around at private lenders. It's his understanding that a lot of private lenders will have significantly better rates than the 6.8% offered with the Stafford, and if I can find anything more than ~2.5% less (so, low 4% or thereabouts) that I should take out all of my loans through them and should ignore the Stafford offer from my program. Does this sound like a good idea? Is it what you'd advise a matriculating grad student with no debt to do? I have absolutely zero familiarity with loans or debt so it's all new for me, and while I don't want to pay a significantly higher interest rate just because I didn't look around, I also don't want to get involved in something that will be more difficult to extract myself and pay my way out of in the future. Any opinions? And if I do take the 20.5k from Stafford, should I also go for Grad PLUS or is that just too high?
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Apr 18, 2013 11:00
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CronoGamer posted:Any opinions? And if I do take the 20.5k from Stafford, should I also go for Grad PLUS or is that just too high? I have honestly begged and pleaded with students to take federal loans over private loans. Do not do this. Private loans are like taking out credit cards: the interest rate will vary a lot, the repayment terms are not nearly as kind as federal loans, and your deferment time is limited - not to mention the forgiveness programs you hear about with federal loans don't apply to private loans. Consolidating them is also a pain. Please do not take out private loans unless you absolutely have to, as a last resort. The GradPLUS loan doesn't have the best interest rate, but it will be better than when your private loan rate goes up much higher (there's no or a very high cap, similar to credit cards).
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Apr 18, 2013 22:43
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Wiggy Marie posted:[The evils of private loans] Speaking of, is there any solid advice or direction I can give to someone that does have private loans? They've told me it is not possible to consolidate them, and that seems somehow unlikely to me - I would believe it is a pain, but not impossible. Is that right? Is there any general advice or a place I could point them to for consolidation or help? (Thanks)
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Apr 18, 2013 22:52
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Companies can and do consolidate them under protest and with a lot of red tape. Wells Fargo was the company recommended in this thread. The Refinance link on simpletuition.com can also do a search. The biggest pain of the process is the fact that consolidation with private loans relies on another credit check (unlike federal loans). So you need to have the credit to justify the refinance.
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Apr 18, 2013 23:09
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Thank you - I am passing that along. I'm woefully clueless about these things as I am a jerk who never had to take out loans for school, so hopefully this will help.
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Apr 18, 2013 23:30
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Wiggy Marie posted:Effexxor, as usual you save the thread from horrific delays in my replies. Thank you! Sure, why not! We might as well just keep this sucker open for now. I will say this though, I have very little experience in the actual disbursement of loans, i.e. the FAFSA side, but for repayment and what things actually mean, I am down.
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Apr 19, 2013 02:15
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Oh yeah, and I should answer some questions, huh? Eris, if your loans are owned by the Department of Education, I would not suggest making special payments by mail. The Department of Ed processors are beyond awful at paying attention and processing those correctly. Probably... 30% of the special payments sent to them, at lease for our borrowers, don't get applied correctly. I'd love for this to get fixed, but they aren't our people, so there is not a lot that we can do to change that, except for tell people how to get it done. I don't want to give out too much about who I work for, but if you go to the 'Make a Payment' or 'Pay Now' screen and see something that states 'Allocate/Edit Payment' or something along those lines, then that'll be the best route to have your payments be applied how you want them. (If your loan is with Sallie Mae you are SOL with their website, though.) Another option is to just go ahead and make the payment, and request via email, phone or chat to have the payment reallocated to the loan that you want. Samizdat Might be worth it to email Great Lakes or webchat, if you don't want to call, and just ask. They should be able to help you with how to navigate their website and find that info so you know where to look for it in the future. But hey! If your grace period is over, you should be able to sign up for a deferment on their website to tide you over. To anyone talking about private loans Wiggy Marie is dead on. Private loans are bad news bears.
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Apr 19, 2013 02:32
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Wiggy Marie posted:I have honestly begged and pleaded with students to take federal loans over private loans. Do not do this. Private loans are like taking out credit cards: the interest rate will vary a lot, the repayment terms are not nearly as kind as federal loans, and your deferment time is limited - not to mention the forgiveness programs you hear about with federal loans don't apply to private loans. Thank you. I wasn't sure how I felt about his advice, not being familiar with the field in the first place, but I was definitely wary. I have no doubts that his intentions are the highest, he's just trying to help me pay off my debt sooner, but I don't want to get snarled in outside lender situations if at all possible. Another site I consulted said largely the same as you, though not so strongly, so I'm comfortable going with the Stafford.
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Apr 19, 2013 03:40
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Years ago, I had a reasonably decent job, and I was repaying an extra hundred dollars or so a month on my loans. Then, I lost said reasonable job, moved back in with my parents, and started paying the minimum on my loans, which I thought was lower because I'd been paying down my principle. Little did I know. Apparently, they took my extra payments, and put it towards future payments in a complicated way I don't quite understand. Like, if I paid an extra $100, it might split up that $100 and put $25 towards my next four payments each. Something confusing like that. I tried to get AES customer service to explain just how they had screwed me, but I don't quite understand it. To make a long story short, after having to pay minimum payments for a while, my monthly payments are back at what I was initially paying out of college, I did not get ahead on paying my principle in any way, shape or form. It's as if when I was paying extra, I was merely covering my period of financial hardship, and the loan repayment goes on as normal. Now, I finally have a little bit extra I can start paying more than the minimum again. I really want to get my loans paid off sooner. Is there any way I can actually pay towards my principle and not have the above fuckery go on?
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Apr 21, 2013 17:17
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Iunnrais, good news! You didn't get screwed. That is a totally normal, good, within regulation way to apply your payments, and let me tell you why. When a payment is received, your loan servicer has to apply it to your account on the day that the payment was received, and move out your next payment due depending on whether you made a full month's worth of payments. You can still make a payment, you just don't have anything due. All your money has been applied, first to interest and then principal once the interest is satisfied, on the day that it was due. For instance, let's say that I have a $100 a month payment. I pay $150 one month, and $150 the next. The first time the payment is made, if you look at what's due, you should see that you have $50 due the next month. This is because you made one months worth of payments, and $50 towards your next month's payment. Then the next month, I send in my next $150. Because I have the $50 payment required, plus another month's payment, my due date will be advanced out for 2 months. The key thing here, is that your payments have still been applied on the day they were made. So yes, you're paid ahead, but even if your due date hadn't been moved ahead, your payments would still have been applied the exact same way, interest first, then the rest to principal. If you have more concerns, ask your servicer for a payment history. You should be able to track, with some work, how every dime of that payment was applied on the date that they got the money. So keep paying that extra and don't mind the due date, it doesn't matter. All that matters is you making your payments like normal and paying down your loans even faster.
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Apr 21, 2013 22:49
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Effexxor posted:Not for PAYE. If you had a loan disbursed prior to 2008, you don't qualify for it. PAYE is great if you can get it, but the requirements are pretty strict for it. My servicer told me that if I consolidate my loans using http://www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov/ I would qualify for PAYE even though I had a loan disbursed prior to 08. I'm still in the process of doing so but it seems promising. http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/understand/plans/pay-as-you-earn Says: "Federal Consolidation Loans that did not repay any PLUS loans for parents" qualify for PAYE.
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Apr 21, 2013 23:57
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Iunnrais posted:Years ago, I had a reasonably decent job, and I was repaying an extra hundred dollars or so a month on my loans. Then, I lost said reasonable job, moved back in with my parents, and started paying the minimum on my loans, which I thought was lower because I'd been paying down my principle. Are you on an income-based repayment plan? If you are, your minimum payment could've dropped due to your loss of income and then bounced back when they re-calculated after your income jumped up again. I can't imagine another scenario where your minimum payment would be lowered over multiple months outside of being on a payment plan that took financial hardship into consideration. Even what Effexxor described would only push the due date of your next payment out or change the minimum payment for one month.
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Apr 22, 2013 00:09
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