Making Student Loan Repayment Easier

Six months after I graduated, my student loans went into repayment. It was an incredibly stressful time for me. I was still getting settled into my job and discovering the many ways in which getting a degree doesn’t prepare you for the working world. At that six month point, I was just starting to hit my stride and starting to feel confident in myself. I was making fewer mistakes, I had really learned a lot about my field, and I was even starting to feel established as an adult in general.

Then the bills arrived. Four years of them. For each year, I had a federal loan and a private loan. Thankfully, my federal loans were already combined into a single monthly payment. My private loans, however, were not. Each year I had shopped around for the best interest rate and, in the end, I held loans with four different lenders besides the federal government. While I hadn’t thought about it when signing for them, this made things more complicated.

Once these loans became part of my budget, there was a lot of math to do. Each loan had different terms and different interest rates and different monthly payments. That is a lot of numbers to constantly juggle and it makes for a lot of room for error. Between budgeting and just making sure I paid the right amount to the right lender, I knew that I needed to do something to make student loan repayment easier. That was when I looked into how to consolidate student loans.

I had expected the process to be difficult and intimidating, but it really wasn’t. Using an online comparison tool, such as Credible.com, allows you to input your information and have lenders contact you with their offers. Each lender will have something different to offer. Some might be able to offer a low interest rate for a set period of time, helping you start your adult life off easier, then it will become flexible after a few years. Others might offer to raise your monthly payment but let you pay off your loan early without penalty. Still others might give you a low interest rate and monthly payment spread out over a longer period of time than your current loans. This gives you maximum flexibility to choose the best option for you.

In my case, I chose to consolidate and shorten the life of my loan. It meant higher monthly payments but it allowed me to be debt free sooner. I had to sacrifice for a few years, but in the end, getting rid of those bills was worth it. If you are wondering how to consolidate student loans, let Credible.com get you started.