Once you have graduated from a college or university, you need to start thinking about the loans you needed to get through these years. They must be paid back in a timely manner in order to keep a good credit rating for such times when you may need another loan to purchase a home or car.
For some students who have a few student loans to repay concurrently, it can be a financial drain on their family finances. That is where student loan consolidation comes in.
Student loan consolidation basically consolidates all your student loans into one loan so that it is easier to manage and make payments. When you are getting a student loan consolidation whether from the government or the private market, your existing student loans are paid for and erased by the student loan consolidation lender. The balances are transferred to the new student loan consolidation. Thus you start a new loan and only needs to make a single payment each month.
There are many advantages to using student loan consolidation. The interest rates will be lower since it takes the average interest rates of your previous student loans. Thus due to government legislation, the maximum interest rate cannot be higher than 8.25 percent.
It becomes a lot easier to manage a single student loan and payment is easier. The repayment options are quite flexible. For federal student loan consolidation, you can opt to start repaying after you have graduated from school. There are also several other options.
Another beneficial side effect of student loan consolidation is that it can also improve your credit score. Since you are effectively clearing all your old student loans and taking a new one, your credit score will increase and this is important if plan to take other types of loans in the future.