Archive for the ‘Student Loan’ Category
Student loan default can be defined as a student loan that has not had a payment made for 270 days or more. Before your loan falls into the default status, it will be considered delinquent, and your creditors will try and collect on the loan any way they can.
If you are trying to hide from your debt and cannot be contacted by your lender or their associates, it will be placed into the default status and turned over to a state guarantee agency or it will be placed in the hands of the Department of Education.
When this takes place, the entire amount you have borrowed becomes due and payable right away. Not just the amount you are behind on, but the entire amount you financed with your original student loan. This happens because the maturity date is accelerated due to your default status, and you agreed to this in your original terms of the student loan you took out.
Other consequences that go along with being in student loan default can include:
Being turned over to a collection agency so that they may try to collect the debt from you;
Your original amount borrowed can be increased to include and costs associated with collecting the loan from you such as court costs and lawyer fees;
You can be sued for the full amount due at any time while in default;
Your wages can be garnished, leaving you with less money than you had originally planned on;
Your income taxes can be withheld for payment;
Your credit history will show that you have defaulted on your loans making it difficult to obtain any kind of financing in the future and possibly interfere with your ability to find someone willing to hire you;
You will no longer be able to receive any kind of financial aid until these loans that are in default are paid in full or you have made half a years payments on time;
You will not be able to receive any federal interest benefits of any kind if you allow your student loan to go into the default status.
In the end, you will have to pay back any amounts you have borrowed to finance your education. If you let your loan go into default, you will have to pay back the original amount plus up to 25% more due to the fees associated with collecting the funds from you.
Many students and former students have probably heard about loan consolidation, federal student loan consolidation or other ways of combining student loans into a more manageable payment.
At the same time, it is a misunderstood topic because of the wide array of student loans that are given to students, and the different rules regarding their consolidation. In this article, I’ll attempt to clear up some of the difficulty regarding this topic, and provide some insight into those wishing to consolidate.
What is student loan consolidation? – While many of you have undoubtedly heard or seen TV commercials for bill consolidation, debt consolidation and other types of payment relief, loan consolidation has nothing to do with any of those options. Simply put student loan consolidation is designed for one type of debt, those loans that were obtained specifically for the purpose of going to school, almost always for higher education.
Unlike Auto loans or Mortgage loans, students will often access a wide variety of loan types to obtain the total funding needed to complete the financial picture of obtaining a degree. Loans are obtained from different sources, such as the Federal government, private banks, and other entities at different times during the course of a college career. Usually, once the degree is completed, or the student has otherwise separated from school, they may have a confusing patchwork of loans with different amounts, rates and terms. Usually, this can add up to a hefty payment once school is complete and the 6 month grace period has expired. Consolidation allows students to combine all of these loans into one loan with a lower, single monthly payment.
Which is better Private or Federal Student Loan Consolidation? – The short answer is that Federal student loan consolidation is always going to be a lower rate and less expensive option because the government backs the loans and consolidating federal loans is easy, painless, and essentially cost free as long as you are qualified. The key element to remember here is that most students have combination of private and federal loans. Because you cannot include private loans in a federal consolidation, a federal consolidation only partially solves the problem for many students.
A private consolidation may also help you out in terms of your monthly payment, but is not assured to do so primarily because the entire consolidation has higher qualification requirements and is not backed by the Federal government or the Department of Education.
Hopefully, this brief overview has helped you sort out some of the differences between the different type of consolidation loans that are available for students. To learn more detail about these private student loan consolidation and federal student loan consolidation, check out the link below.
Crushing student loan debt is hammering college graduates. Student loan defaults are soaring toward new records. College loan borrowers have called for debt relief. But now President Obama has proposed faster government-backed loan consolidation and loan forgiveness plans to help borrowers repay their college debts and give a boost to the American economy.
President Obama’s decision to expand education loan forgiveness to more students now could very well mean that loans you took out to pay for college may get much easier to handle. Details of his new “Pay As You Earn” program, outlining new rules for repayment, are still emerging.
Loan consolidation at a lower interest rate is the main objective of the plan. Three major features of the plan benefiting college graduates struggling to make their monthly educational loan payments are:
Repayment Term
Each loan that would be consolidated retains its original repayment term. Thus, borrowers will pay less interest over the life of the loan than they would under the traditional consolidation programs.
Interest Rate
A fixed rate (not to exceed 8.25%) after applying the 0.25% interest rate reduction to qualifying loans being consolidated. Lower interest rates means more of the monthly payment pays off the principal balance.
Electronic Debit Payment Benefit
Those who take advantage of this new consolidation plan are eligible for an additional 0.25% interest rate reduction if their loan is repaid through the Department of Education’s automatic debit system.
The loan consolidation program will only be made available during a 6-month window, Jan. 2012 through June 2012, so borrowers need to act fast.
The government wants those people holding both private and government student loans to be allowed to consolidate their debts right now into one new government loan. Such a move could slash their interest rates, and save them money in the process as the federal government speeds up roll-out of an income-based repayment program that was originally slated to begin in 2014.
College graduates would still be responsible to keeping making payments on their loans, but those revised payments would be capped at just 10% of their income.
And, best of all for those who borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to finance their college education, their loans would then be forgiven after 20 years.
It is still not entirely clear how many students the new law is aimed at helping; estimates range from 450,000 to upwards of 6 million.
When Congress passed the Income-Based Repayment Plan (IBRP) in 2010 — the new law which drops the monthly payment to 10% of discretionary income and would forgive all college student debt after 20 years — there was a long waiting period before it became a reality; it was originally not set to go into effect until 2014. Now, the new terms would take effect in Jan. 2012.
Low-income borrowers would benefit the most. If a student loan borrower qualifies, then monthly payments are based only on any income above 150% of the poverty line ($16,335, the current 2011 U.S. poverty threshold.)
For a graduate living on their own, IBRP payments would be based on what he or she earned over this $16,335. Moreover, if the graduate is unemployed and has no income at all, then no monthly loan payment would be due at all.
Although it is unclear how this monthly reporting would be done, this new debt relief plan still represents a positive step forward toward resolving the debacle affecting untold numbers of college graduates who are struggling to make their college debt repayments. More detailed information on how to get student loans forgiven, visit FindHow2.com.