Student Loan Consolidation Company - 3 Tips For How to Find the Right One

Having a lot of student loans can feel like a burden. After all, life has enough expenses for most of us to deal with: just to get by month to month, we have to pay for housing, food, medical bills, and transportation.

One way to potentially reduce your monthly student loan payments is to find a student loan consolidation company and consolidate your student loan debt. This is ideal if you have more than one student loan. By consolidating, you can reduce your monthly payments by potentially lowering your interest rate and stretching out your payments over more time.

Student Loan Consolidation: Federal Or Private?

The first decision you will need to make is whether you should consolidate with a private lender or with a federal consolidation program. The decision is an easy one to make, once you know how it works.

Basically, you should consolidate with a private lender if your existing loans are private loans. 

Private Consolidation: How Lenders Determine Your Interest Rate

When it comes to private loan consolidation, it is important to understand how your interest rate is determined. Essentially, it is a combination of two factors: 1. the current standard rate such as the prime rate (or LIBOR) rate, and 2. your credit score.

How To Find The Right Student Loan Consolidation Company

Here are 3 tips for getting the lowest rate on your private consolidation loan:

1. Make a list of at least 5-7 consolidation companies: As with dating, looking for a job, car shopping, and pretty much anything else in life where choice is involved, more choices are always better when you are starting out. Of course, at some point you will need to reduce your choices down to a reasonable number. But, start with as large a set of companies as possible.

2. Narrow your list down to 3 companies:Do online research on the companies you have found. Look at factors such as how long they have been in the student loan consolidation business, any low advertised rates they show, and the terms and conditions of their loans. Also, pay attention to whether the company feels like one you would want to do business with. 

Fixed Rate Private Student Loan Consolidation: The Pros And Cons

Most students today have to take out at least one student loan in order to pay for the cost of their post-secondary education. Attending college or university is not cheap and even with most families having two working parents, it is still rare for families to be able to come up with all the money needed on their own. The pros of a fixed rate private student loan consolidation certainly over-weigh the bad, if you have outstanding debt and are not able to pay it off on your own.

If you think fixed rate student loan consolidation is the answer for you, first you need to find the appropriate lending institution. Find out about the different lenders in your area then take the time to research and learn more about them. You can only figure out which is best for your fixed rate private loan consolidation by learning more about them.

You should also take time to get reviews on the different lenders before making any final decisions. Chances are you have some friends or family members who went through school and used a loan to pay for their schooling as you did. In that case, they can offer you a personalized and firsthand review on the lender they went through and let you know whether they recommend them or not. You may also want to use a fixed rate private student loan calculator, which estimates how much you will have to pay each month to cover the loan. This helps you work your budget around it so you can plan and always have your payment ready.

How to Choose Student Loan Consolidation Programs at the Lowest Rates

Student loan consolidation programs are pretty easy to locate. Finding the program that has the lowest rate may be a little more difficult. In order to be eligible for a consolidation loan you will of course need to have outstanding loan balances. The student loans that you have at present may have high interest rates and will take years to repay.

The federal government usually offers much better interest rates than the private loan concerns can provide. When you locate a possible loan source you can easily use the online calculators that are available for free to determine the true value of the potential loan. Using the calculator you can easily see what the monthly payments will look like and how much the interest will add to the loan over time.

Private Banks do offer student loan consolidation programs. Their interest rate is called Prime Rate and what you will ultimately end up with in a contract will most likely be a little higher than this. You can find Prime Rate online to get a good idea of what you are looking at when you are looking into student debt consolidation loans. A good place to start is by approaching the bank that holds your checking account and asking them if they offer student loan consolidation.

If the loans that you already have are federal then the consolidation needs to be a federal consolidation program. On the contrary, if your student loans are private funding then you will need private student loan consolidation programs. The interest rates at are currently being offered can be researched online by searching for 'student loan consolidation_ interest rates'. When you know what the going rates are then any offers for consolidation programs that come your way will be easy to spot as a good deal or not.