For those of us who had to pull out student loans, we know about the grace period we are given after graduation before we are required to start paying off those loans. Some of us may be in the midst of the grace period and for others, the grace period is long gone and now reality has set in that those loans need to be paid back. For some people, this means paying back several student loans from different lenders. It can feel pretty overwhelming.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are three things you can do to organize your student loans.
1.) Set up automatic payment
Setting up autopay enables your student loan lender to automatically deduct your monthly payment straight from your bank account. Doing this can give you a peace of mind, since you don’t have to worry each month about being late on payments.
There could also be a discount for setting up autopay. According to FinAid.org, “The most common loan discounts include a 0.25% interest rate reduction for having your monthly loan payments direct debited from your bank account.” And you still have the option of paying above and beyond the minimum payment via a one-time payment.
Just don’t forget to account for those automatic loan payment deductions when checking your bank balance. Record payment dates on your calendar or keep track of the Due Dates using Finovera.
2.) Set due dates all around each other
If your student loan payments have widely varying due dates each month (say, one is due the 1st, another the 15th, another the 25th), they can just add to your stress. Many companies will let you request for a new date, including big name banks like Wells Fargo.
If you have auto-debit, then this can help give you more time to ensure the money’s there versus frequently having money withdrawn from your account. If you don’t have auto-debit, then paying everything around the same time will make it much easier and less stressful than spreading out your bills.
Besides, who wants to pay bills every week? Knocking them out all at once is the way to go.
3.) Consolidate
Perhaps the best way to organize your student loans is to reduce how many of them you have. By consolidating, you can combine your loans and only have one payment to one lender. In many cases, this means one smaller payment instead of several payments that add up to a larger monthly amount.
You can usually consolidate federal student loans with each other and can sometimes consolidate private loans with each other. With federal consolidation, the consolidation loan is an average of all the interest rates. And with private student loan consolidation, you usually end up with a variable interest rate (the rate changes as the market changes).
Still, consolidating can make your life a whole lot easier.
3 Ways to Tackle Student Loans
