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Originally Posted by bdizzle
Right not everything is deferred. there's 2 lendeers both have subsudized and unsub'ed loans.
Stafford Loan 1 - $14,501 6.504%/6.80% (subsidized/unsubsidized)
Stafford Loan 2 - $13,250 6.540%/6.540% (subsidized/unsubsidized)
I should be done with school in 2008-2009, so repayment should be right around the corner. I'm a pretty agressive saver, and if things work out the way I'm hoping, I should have at least half paid off by the time I graduate. And the rest in another year or two. Those rates seem high to me, but I don't know very much about what the rates are these days.
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The fact you have subsidized and unsubsidized loans makes sense to wait. Once you combine these two types into a single loan, they cannot be seperated. Meaning it's tough to pay off the smaller pieces and reduce payment size on the consolidated loan... and no reason to make a decision today which cannot be undone, which may impact you now negatively.
You suggest you have 27k in student loans. If 6k of this is subsidized, you have ~21k of unsubsidized loans now with a payment of ~$119/month for interest (right now).
If you consolidated, all would be unsubsidized, meaning the interest only payment on 27k would be ~$153/month. This assumes same interest rate before and after, and a repayment period of 10 years.
I might suggest posting your numbers to a loan calculator.
I found it easier to pay off my loans keeping them seperate. Each of my loans looks about the same size as yours (my tuition was between 12k-16k a year for 5 years). Interest rates at the time were around 6.25%.
6.25% is cheap money... consider your student loans an investment in your future (to secure higher earning power in the future).
I'd wait to see your first job and the "local issues" you'll face. For example, I wanted to move into a house within 3 years of my first job, and one of the things I needed to do was pay off some of my debt (close the accounts) for the mortgage ratios (front end/back end). It was much easier to close the accounts if student loans were seperate, and the payment difference between 6.25% unconsolidated and 4% consolidated did not come close to the satisfaction of having my first house.
One other point, some banks won't touch the unsubsized loans... I had some discussions with banks on consolidating, it just didn't make sense to only consolidate "some" of my loans.