Refinancing student loans (pay, rates, vehicle, credit)

[Erin_85]

I have a $16,000ish personal student loan with a 9% interest rate. It was 8.75 and they increased it for no reason. My credit score is a little over 700 so I know that wasn't the issue. Is it possible to refinance to get a lower interest rate?

Sure. There are tons of places that will refinance for you, like SoFi.

AFAIK, SoFi doesn't even use credit scores. They look at other things like degree, income, etc to determine job stability and how likely you are to be able to repay, and they only lend to low risk borrowers. You can find more traditional lenders as well.

[Fedupwiththis]

I was going to refinance. I owe around $25k total with $14k of that being 6.5% the rest is closer to 4.5% average. Being its tax deductible its probably more like 5% and 3.5%.. My loans are Federal, which means I can put them in deferment for like 2 years if I ever had to. If I refinanced that option would go away. I'm on a rather fast repayment plan so my minimums are $400 a month.. To me it wasn't worth lowering my loans even 1% to lose the options of freezing payment if life ever decided to throw me a curve ball.

Your rates are pretty high so I def think it would be worth looking into a refinance option and stretching out the repayment plan. If you can get them down to like 4% just take the longest repayment option to keep the monthly payments low. You can always pay more toward the loan to pay them off faster. If you ever land in hot water you wont have a big student loan payment to worry about, saving a few percentage points and paying the loan off early really saves a very minimal amount that just isn't worth it in my opinion.

[Erin_85]

Thanks for the input. I looked at the credit union we used for our vehicle and they have good rates for student loan refi as well. I will probably go that route.