| Solving college grad's debt puzzle becomes easy with a little he1p
She is struggling with how best to advise her daughter - a recent college graduate - on paying down her $25,000 in student loans. Wons did what any wise parent would do. She asked for help. Wons' daughter works as a project manager at a medical software company. She has an annual salary of more than $50,000. Her employer provides a 401(k). She has about $13,000 in cash from recently redeemed Series EE savings bonds. She has no credit card debt. She has no payments on a reliable car with low mileage. She's sharing an apartment and her portion of the rent is just over $500 a month. Wons asked the following: Should her daughter consolidate her college loans during her six-month grace period? (She has federal Stafford and Perkins loans.) Should she use the entire $13,000 to pay down the loans or keep making monthly payments to take advantage of the interest deduction? Should she invest the $13,000? While paying on the loans, should she contribute to her 401(k)? Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of www.FinAid.org, recommends that Wons' daughter consolidate any Stafford loans that were disbursed before July 1, 2006.
Buried in Debt: New Hope for Today’s College Grads
My son, Mike, after three years of college, is now $20,000 in debt for student loans. This despite the fact that we have been sufficiently indigent so as to qualify for “free" money: state and federal grants. But before free money is used to pay such things as tuition, first the university taps the borrowed money, such as Stafford loans. Soon, the student – who will be required to begin repaying the loan six months after he or she graduates – has incurred so much debt that it will be years before earned income starts to break even with what it cost the kid to go to college. In recent months, there have been a number of news stories concerning conflict of interest in loan “steering" on the part of some colleges that “direct" student borrowers to some lenders, but not others.
NextStudent Urges Wisdom When Considering College Debt Repayment ...
PHOENIX, AZ--(Marketwire - July 6, 2007) - Graduating college students across the country recently have received their degrees and are taking their first steps into the real world, which includes repaying their student loans. According to NextStudent, a leading Phoenix-based education funding company, composing a strategy for repaying college student debt is simple, once borrowers are armed with accurate, easily applicable information. Fortunately, repayment of most student loans does not begin immediately after graduation. This gives borrowers the time to organize their finances, put together a budget, and figure out how they will begin making payments. With Perkins Loans repayment is not mandatory until nine months after graduation. On the other hand, with Stafford Loans students may not have to start repaying the loan until six months following graduation.
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