Lower Your Loan Payments! and other notices…
By: Sherri Peterson, Financial Aid
More and more, advertisements are popping up in your email, on Facebook and on other social media sites offering to help you lower your student loan payments or to help you get federal loans forgiven. Please be very wary of these advertisements and the companies that send them. Most of these companies sill charge you for their assistance in doing what you can do for free directly though the federal government. The process that these predatory companies are offering to “help” you with is called Loan Consolidation.
Loan Consolidation is a process in which you borrow one new federal loan to pay off all of your existing federal loans. You can do this directly through the federal government on your own, for free, at www.studentloans.gov. Typically consolidation is an option to look into after you are completely finished with school if you will be making payments to multiple loan servicers. Consolidation may help you lower your monthly payments depending on which repayment plan you choose. But even without consolidating, you have a choice of repayment plans. You can change your repayment plan with your loan servicer once per year. For information on the different repayment options that are available, please visit studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/understand/plans.
There are downsides to consolidation, so we recommend that you research to ensure consolidation is the right option for you. Some great websites with information about consolidation pros and cons are:
http://www.studentloanborrowerassistance.org/start-here/federal-loans/consolidation-loans/;
There are also federal loan forgiveness programs available, but you do not always need to consolidate to be eligible for them. For this information, visit https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation.
If you ever have questions or trouble repaying any of your student loans, please contact your federal loan servicer or the Financial Aid Office; we can either answer your questions, or point you in the right direction to get the assistance you need.