Student Loan Repayment Blues
The grace period on my student loans is ending, so Sallie Mae has processed my consolidation loan and sent me the terms of my repayment. I know there were potentially better deals for consolidating the loans that I have read about on Fatwallet’s Finance forums, but I was out of luck due to the single lender rule. The gist of that rule apparently is that if you only have one lender (ie: your school uses Sallie Mae to process your loans), you have to consolidate with them. Although you can also run into problems due to the selling of loans, even though you may have probably from Bank A, when it comes time to consolidate, there is no guarantee that they have not sold your loan along the way. It is common for banks to take the loans they have made, bundle them up together and sell them to others as an investment so the bank has more money available to make loans.
FinAid has some advice for getting around this rule. Of course, when I was in school getting loans, I had no idea about this rule or the potential benefits to me when it came to consolidating time, otherwise I might have tried to do something about it. That is not to say I would not have consolidated with Sallie Mae, who knows…but I would have had more options without as much hassle and work if I wanted to try to bypass the rule.
Of course if I knew then what I know now, I would have also tried to work more during college and taken out less in loans. The interest rate on the loans is fixed at 2.875%, so even though I have a nice bit of debt, it could be a lot worse, plus I got a Master’s degree out of it. Now if only I could start putting that degree to better use.
Speaking along those lines of what I would do if I could go back, I would have worked harder to get more experience in my field. While I had not really decided on my current career path till grad school, that was still 2’ish years that I could have put to better use to pad my resume with. That in turn would make job-hunting a lot easier potentially, which would make paying back the student loans easier, well you get the idea. My internship was in my field so that helps, but the downside was it did not help much with networking, which an internship can be great for in the right situation.
So as of now, barring any prepayments, rich wives, lottery wins..etc. I will be paying back my loans until 2025. Something to look forward to…