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I want to understand the best option, whether paying all monthly or consolidating. I understand there is a non profit that will help figure out which is best.
Does anyone know any organizations that might help bring it all together?
Pay once every two weeks. Consolidate the loan, then cut your monthly bills in half and pay it once every two weeks. This allows less time for interest to build up and it also lets you make 13 monthly payments a year (26 pay periods a year), as opposed to only 12 when you pay monthly. Good luck.
I don't think you need credit counseling unless the payments are difficult to keep up with. Federal loans can be consolidated to a new federal loan, and private loans to a new private loan (with good credit and income). This would give you two bills to pay: Federal loan, and Private loan. Since your interest rates are fairly close together, I don't see consolidation as necessarily a bad thing, as long as your new rates are not higher than the averages of the old rates.
The private loans will require you to actually qualify for a loan to consolidate them, while the federal loans can be done without qualifying as long as you are current and meet the requirements. Because of the payment flexibility of federal loans, it would not be a good idea to consolidate them into a private loan, though if you qualify you could. You would lose the ability to go on IBR payments should you have low-income years at some point.
Pay once every two weeks. Consolidate the loan, then cut your monthly bills in half and pay it once every two weeks. This allows less time for interest to build up and it also lets you make 13 monthly payments a year (26 pay periods a year), as opposed to only 12 when you pay monthly. Good luck.
Be careful. It is vital, if you are going to do something of this sort, to make sure that the payments will remain current. Each payment due has a "window" of time that can be counted towards that payment - how long is the window? If it is like a credit card (25 days), you will occassionally run into times when only one of the half-payments falls within the window - and thus you would be counted late on that payment.
It is CRUCIAL with some trick of this sort to read ALL the fine print in the loan documents and carefully work it out to make sure that the payments will always be current!
Thanks everyone.
Great suggestion on the paying twice a month.
I pay my CC's twice a month and yes sometimes this falls at an odd time and then I am sent a bill - hope that makes sense. When this happens I just pay the minimum.
I do not need counseling per se, I was looking for someone to help me provide a plan of action. I stink at figuring it out.
Thanks everyone.
Great suggestion on the paying twice a month.
I pay my CC's twice a month and yes sometimes this falls at an odd time and then I am sent a bill - hope that makes sense. When this happens I just pay the minimum.
Do you pay off the entire balance once every two weeks on your cards, or do you pay half the minimum payment once every two weeks?
If the former, you are covered anyhow since even a single full- balance payment within the grace period will always equal or exceed both the minimum payment and the statement balance, so you will never be late or pay interest. (possible exception could occur if you returned a lot of items after the statement closing date, since some CC's do not allow returned retail purchases to count towards your monthly payment.)
If the latter, you are revolving debt and need to concentrate on the credit card debt first, before tackling the student loans (unless the interest on the CC is very low). And if you ran up the CC's on impulse purchases, then you should cut them up.
There are balances, but not bad. I am trying to play with my FICO score and raise it.
I wish they were impulse purchases.
Thank you.
No problem, but you do not need to revolve any debt to build a good credit score. If you pay your cards off in full, don't get too close to the limit, never miss a payment, and keep up to date on your loans, you will build good credit.
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