Quote:
Originally Posted by tangerinepuddle
Anyone take one of these out to cover tuition not paid for by federal loans? What is your advice?
|
I had to take out about 7k for my last degree. The downsides that you need to weigh are, 1. The interest rate you get (Watch your credit score). 2. what it may do to your consolidation after you graduate.
I wanted to consolidate all my loans, but if I had consolidated the private loans with my federal, it would have raised the interest rate for all my loans. So I chose to keep my private loans seperate and not consolidate those, just the federal. That way I got ~2.8% on my federal. My private loans are higher (I think 8 or 9%).
With everything together the interest rate jumped to around 5% for everything and I had to . And I have about 50k in federal loans.
I needed the money regardless so they only real decision I could make was the consolidation.
Oh, I remember that they charge a small fee (50 bucks or so) if I wanted to put them into forebearance. And! charge to consolidate them.