Loan Consolidation

Consolidating your loans should be on the basis of the amount of money you can save from consolidating, there is no use of consolidating your loans when in turn you are paying more after consolidation than you use to pay before. How much you save by consolidating depends upon the interest rate and your duration of repayment, in case you wish to extend the time limit of you plan then you need to pay more.

Generally, it has the duration of 10 years to repay your debt, in case of student loans. But it can be extended up to 30 years depending upon the amount. This is pretty obvious that by extending the limit you will have to pay more interest. Consolidation terms are usually same everywhere, you must check with the lender that holds your current loans, if all your loans are with a single lender then you must ask him to consolidate. You can consolidate your loans only once.

There can be few future discounts on the interest rate to lure customers but usually interest rate is same for all lenders. If you and your spouse wish to consolidate your loans then it is possible, but you both will be responsible to repay the loan, even after separating or getting divorced. Consolidating your loans at the time of your grace period will let you enjoy a lower interest rate but you will also loose you grace period.

In that case you must start the process from fifth month of your six month grace period. The process usually takes a span of 30 days. Loan consolidation reduces your monthly payments up to 50%, you can also defer your payments up to 3 years and also secure an interest rate as best as 6.62%. A further reduction in the interest rate can be done by consolidating during your grace period.