Student loans
 

This has something to do with academics. Have any of you consolidated your student loans and locked in the rates?

I have a large amount of loans and I can pay it all off right now, but the interest rates are so low it's ridiculous. If I can lock in a rate between 3% and 4% I'll be very happy. I intentionally racked up loans because of that since I figured I can dump that amount of money into an investment that provides a higher return (an index fund returns on average 10%) and use the investment interest to pay off the debt interest.

Anyone else do this?

The only problem I spent about 10 hours calling up different companies and trying to research all the conditions and rates but then my loan holder is being a prick and not wanting to release it so I have to harass them. Anyone get them to let go of their loans before consolidating with another company that wasn't the majority holder of your loans?

-Rudey
--This is a confusing post I bet.

Rudey-

I consolodated all of mine (well all that could be consolodated) years ago and locked in a rate of 5% on close to 30K in loans. I chose Sallie Mae because at the time they had the best payment options. Mr. Amycat has his consolodated with Direct Lending, because a few months ago, they had the best deal. Do your research, but IMO, it boils down to these 2 being the best most of the time.

Now, with the ones that I could not consolodate, I pay the bare minimum on the sallie mae and have been throwing $$$ at the higher interest ones--they are now within 4 months of payoff. Then that same money will be thrown at sallie mae--and will be paid off in 4 years instead of 25.

I just want to say I have very little chance of ever naming any of my kids SALLIE MAE!! I hate her. :p

I consolidated all of my loans this year through the College Loan Corp. I locked in my interest rate at less than 3% (can't remember the exact number.

Seriously? I'm impressed. All the companies I found were giving me a quote of 4.125% and then reduction incentives if i paid on time for a certain amount of payments and if i linked the payments to a direct deposit account. I think with all that it would get just somewhere in the 3% range.

I also heard you can deduct your interest from your taxes. I'll ask a friend about this but if i can have that money with no interest pretty much because i get it back through tax deductions then it's great - it's free money to invest in the market or to buy a home. Am I reaching here? This sounds too good to be true. Maybe i should just be satisfied with getting a fixed low rate.

-Rudey

We were just looking into this last night.

We haven't consolidated loans yet, but I DID find out that rates go up in July, so you have time to shop around.

And yes, the interest you pay on the loans is tax deductible.

Interest on loans is tax deductible OVER a certain $$ amt of interest. I am not sure what that figure is, but I've never been able to deduct the interest on my loans, and at one point they were over $40K

Ha ha, I had a client that was an accountant and she had 2 dogs, one was named Sallie Mae and the other was Fannie Mae.

I consolidated my school loans with Sallie Mae about 6 years ago-I had over 77,000$ in governtment loans. The rates were not to good back then, I ended up with 8.75% and it lowered this past year to 7.75% b/c I did the automatic debit pay. You can deduct some of the interest of theloans if you make a certain income. i unfortunately make too much $ to deduct the interest but I think if you make less than 65,000$ you can deduct the interest (but please check with your accountant on this figure).

One of my collegues who graduated a year and half ago got a rate of 3% from sallie mae-damn I was jealous! I f I could have gotten this rate i would definitely invest rather than want to pay them off.

I could pay off my loans now but I would rather continue to invest money. They had a segment on CNBC a few months ago, I can't remember who the financial advisor was but he recommended investing money every month rather than paying off loans quicker b/c in the end you will come out ahead. He also mentioned that some people people feel better if their loans are payed off sooner so if you fall into this category then paying them off sooner might be better (I have struggled with this b/c these damn student loans are like a monkey on my back :().

I am on the 30 year program but will hopefully pay them off alot sooner but for now would rather re-model my house and invest in the stock market while things remain low and "on sale".

Go back to school half-time for a short amount of time, take out as small a loan as possible, and try and consolidate again and see if your rate shoots down?

Amycat, do you have any idea what that rate you have to be above is?

kdonline I don't have time because I'm in my grace period right now and payments start in January. I guess I want to take care of that before then. And yeah interest rates will definitely go up the next time the fed meets.

-Rudey

can i hire one of you to take care of my financials and loans when i graduate? i just read this thread and i felt like i was reading chinese. i have no idea what any of you are saying :(

lol listen you're able to get loans at a variable rate right now which means the interest rate can change. Now consolidation creates one loan from all of your little loans and creates one fixed rate that can't change.

So if you know you'll need money later, which you will probably for a home, max out your loans if they are at a nice low rate because when you consolidate you can stay around that low rate. Then with that money invest it in something that pays you more than what you lose ya dig?

-Rudey

Actually you can deduct your interest...
 

There is no set amount of loans that you have to have in order to be able to decuct the interest paid into a student loan. Regardless of whether you have 5K in loans or $50,000. HOWEVER, there are income limits for using this deduction. I beleive you can't make more than $65K a year and claim the deduction.

I just consolidated through Collegiate Funding Services and they were great!! They consolidated my federal loans AND my private loans and now I make one easy payment that they take right out of my checking account!

The person I talked to there was SUPER patient and very helpful. He was really great about explaining everything and helping me to get all of the information that we needed.

Good luck!
Allison

If you are married and make over 100K combined you also cannot write off interest for student loans. I thought it was 50K for single, but maybe it went up. Maybe I should look into if it went up for married people too. We've only been able to write off student loan interest 1 year because of this rule.

Re: Actually you can deduct your interest...
 

So I follow the law, I myself am a good investment for student loans since I will be productive as opposed to most schmos at podunk u, I'm able to generate capital to bring returns to cover my debt, and I'm able to use my debt as a form of investment similar to a home but that is considered fraud? I hate to tell you but you're wrong...don't piss on my parade baby.

-Rudey
--I'm in the money...I'm in the money...doo doo da doo doo.