Question:I have a ton of student loans, that I've been deferring for financial reasons. I have federal loans with Sallie Mae and private loans with Wachovia/AES. Any ideas on how to put them all together so I have one monthly payment, to say a bank rather than various companies, like I have now? Any good banks I should try or talk with?
Answers:
Your Federal Student Loans can not be consolidated with your Private Student Loans through the FFELP Consolidation Loan Program. In addition, if you were given the option to consolidate your Federal Student Loans and your Private Student Loans together I would not suggest doing so; if you did do this you would lose all your Federal Benefits on your Federal Student Loans.
You can consolidate your Federal Student Loans and your Private Student Loans separately though. If I were you I would keep in mind that July 1st is the interest rate change date every year, so it would be in your best interest to do so before July 1st. If you are interested in Private Student Loan Consolidation, I would wait until after July 1st when programs are expected to improve in that area.
One thing that you may be very interested in when dealing with your Federal Student Loans is; when you consolidate your Federal Student Loans together you not only lower your monthly payments, but you also reset your Deferment and Forbearance time to zero giving you a fresh 3 years of both. For more information please see the source below.
As far as I know, private loans and federal loans cannot be consolidated together. But, since you have loans through Sallie Mae, they are one of the top places to go when consolidating. You can check out their website, or one of your statements, to get the number and call them about a loan consolidation. They will consolidate private loans as well as federal loans.
www.salliemae.com, www.studentloansolutions.com, www.studentloanconsolidator.co...
I googled student loan consolidation and these are just a few of the places that I found.
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