Paying off student loans can be detrimental to your financial status. Student debt has skyrocketed in the last few years, and now students are graduating with an enormous amount of debt and struggling to find a job. Situations like these may seem hopeless, but there are alternatives to help you with your student loan debt.
Government Options
Thinking about your student loan debt, the government may be the last thing you consider to help you with it. Don’t think too fast! The government offers ways to help students consolidate or even forgive student loans. One way the government can help you is if you ask for a deferment on your payments. A deferment acts as a way to put off paying your student loans until you are in a better position to begin paying them. Deferments can usually be granted if you are still a student, in the military, or currently unemployed. Deferments do not decrease the amount you have to pay back but some deferments may pay for your interest during the time it takes effect.
Consolidate Your Loans
Another option to help you from being crushed by your student loans is consolidating them. You can consolidate your loans if you have multiple government loans you are paying back. Consolidating them may reduce the monthly payment on your loans but be wary, you may be paying back more for your loans through consolidation by interest accumulated. Consolidation gives you an immediate benefit of paying less for your monthly payments but, you may be paying for them over a more extended period of time.
Repayment Plans
Change your repayment plans to better fit your financial standing. Generally, loans give you a ten-year standard rate of monthly payments to pay off your loans. This payment plan can be adjusted. A Graduated Repayment plan offers the option of smaller monthly payments now and increasing every two years. This option can work for people who are expecting to be in a better place financially down the road than what they are at the moment. An Extended Repayment plan will allow you to extend your loans up to twenty-five years to be paid off. This comes at a much smaller monthly payment, but ultimately you will be paying more because of the interest accumulated over that time. Then there is an Income-based plan. This plan fluctuates your payments by what your annual income is. This option will assess what your income formulate what you can pay for your monthly payment.