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Last week to consolidate student loans

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Way2Broke

Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2005
Posts
2,882
If you have not already done so, this is the last week to consolidate student loans before your interest rates jump 2% or more thanks to the idiots in Washington. The interest rate for a student loan is higher than that for a house, thanks Bush!

Does anyone know a good place to consolidate PRIVATE LOANS (AKA:KEY BANK). I think I am already paying 7.5% on the Key Bank student loan. Before long no one will be able to afford to go to college because of banks.

Is Key Bank still the most common way to finance flight training?
 
Way2Broke said:
If you have not already done so, this is the last week to consolidate student loans before your interest rates jump 2% or more thanks to the idiots in Washington. The interest rate for a student loan is higher than that for a house, thanks Bush!

Does anyone know a good place to consolidate PRIVATE LOANS (AKA:KEY BANK). I think I am already paying 7.5% on the Key Bank student loan. Before long no one will be able to afford to go to college because of banks.

Is Key Bank still the most common way to finance flight training?
Way2Broke- I have a Private Loan from Key out for flight training... I still haven't found a way to consolidate the loan yet - PM me if you can find out anything. Thanks.
 
my key loan sucks..........i can't find a way to consolodate it without paying what I would save in interest, back in fees..

-mini
 
For what it's worth, I consolidated my federal loans last year at this time through Nelnet and have been happy with the results, I guess. It was a simple undertaking if I remember accurately. Fortunately, at that time, the interest rate was locked in the 3% neighborhood. The only word of caution I heard from financial advisors at the school was that when you lock in the rate, you're betting that it won't decrease below what you're locking it in at (duh!) in future years. I hope students/graduates this year don't end up shooting themselves in the foot locking in a rate that may be higher than the federal mandated rate in the future. Good luck.
 
Way2Broke said:
If you have not already done so, this is the last week to consolidate student loans before your interest rates jump 2% or more thanks to the idiots in Washington. The interest rate for a student loan is higher than that for a house, thanks Bush!

Does anyone know a good place to consolidate PRIVATE LOANS (AKA:KEY BANK). I think I am already paying 7.5% on the Key Bank student loan. Before long no one will be able to afford to go to college because of banks.

Is Key Bank still the most common way to finance flight training?

you should do it through whoever your lender is. For instance if you got loans from Citibank...consolidate through them, if you got it from federal direct, consolidate them through federal direct. Just do searches...almost all of them have online applications for the consolidations. I just got mine all consolidated.
 
Mine was from a smaller bank, but I just googled their website and followed the directions posted on it. Took awhile because I used the electronic signature which takes about 4 hours to process.

I'm glad you posted this though. There's no reason to pay more for those loans than we already do.
 
For those of us that have private loans it appears that we are screwed. Being that I am a pilot I am use to this, so I will save my whining and just smile and act like it doesn't hurt.
 
I'm curious as to how much you guys own on the loans? I had a Key personal loan to finish up some training but that was paid off long ago.
 
You appear to be right, Way2Go.

Those of us with private loans don't seem to have many options, other than to bend over and take it from The Man.

I've been looking to do something -- anything -- the last week or so, and seem to be ineligible for every sort of consolidation program out there. It has been a real frustrating experience.

If any of you out there have had success consolidating your private loans and could provide some information, it would be most appreciated.
 
the key loans are impossible. my financial advisor called and talked to them and their advice was to pay off the loan in full.

the only thing that i came up with so far is to get my parents or grandparents to take out a second mortgage at a lower fixed rate and then i pay them. some of the quotes i got were significantly lower than what im paying now.

god help us.
 
Okay, I just got the shocker of the month. I just checked my Sallie Mae STUDENT LOANS, of which I have two dispursments. One is currently at 12.5% and the other is at 13%. That should be against the law! At least Key Bank is only at 8.3%. The solution my finacial advisor gave me was to use a credit card that gives you 0% interest for 12 months, figure out how much you can afford to pay for the next 12 months (more than the min) and put it all on the 0% interest card. This way you are eating away at the interest faster, thus saving money. Anyone else have any fancy tricks?

I mean geesh, my non flight training student loans are in the 5% ball park. What is it about being a pilot that makes us targets for getting screwed all the time.
 
Way2Broke said:
Okay, I just got the shocker of the month. I just checked my Sallie Mae STUDENT LOANS, of which I have two dispursments. One is currently at 12.5% and the other is at 13%. That should be against the law! At least Key Bank is only at 8.3%. The solution my finacial advisor gave me was to use a credit card that gives you 0% interest for 12 months, figure out how much you can afford to pay for the next 12 months (more than the min) and put it all on the 0% interest card. This way you are eating away at the interest faster, thus saving money. Anyone else have any fancy tricks?

I mean geesh, my non flight training student loans are in the 5% ball park. What is it about being a pilot that makes us targets for getting screwed all the time.

Dang. My private salliemae loans are @ 8.0% right now, and my federal loans through sallie mae are locked in @ 2.875%. 36 ontime payments chops 1.0% off the federal loans! I have a third loan through citizens bank (I think) which is at 9.0%.

As far as houses being cheaper than school, well, the bank can take your house away. They can't really sell your diploma.
 
Way2Broke said:
Okay, I just got the shocker of the month. I just checked my Sallie Mae STUDENT LOANS, of which I have two dispursments. One is currently at 12.5% and the other is at 13%. That should be against the law! At least Key Bank is only at 8.3%. The solution my finacial advisor gave me was to use a credit card that gives you 0% interest for 12 months, figure out how much you can afford to pay for the next 12 months (more than the min) and put it all on the 0% interest card. This way you are eating away at the interest faster, thus saving money. Anyone else have any fancy tricks?

I mean geesh, my non flight training student loans are in the 5% ball park. What is it about being a pilot that makes us targets for getting screwed all the time.

At least you can still write off the interest on your tax return as its still a student loan. Using a credit card does zip...

I'm currently at war with Sallie Mae and hope they all burn in Hell. My original interest rate was 4.0%. As of last week it was 9.75%.
Last month they sent me a consolidation offer for my private student loans with a locked in interest rate; but when I called they said too bad, so sad, those are career training loans and are excluded from the offer.
Last week I get an announcement of the increased interest rate/new payment schedule. Perhaps someone smarter than me can explain how increasing interest rates allows them to LOWER the monthly payment?

So now, my min payment is $177 over a period of forever. However, I pay $600 per month ever since my 2nd year pay kicked in. Its painful financially but I'll have the damn thing paid off next year and will screw Sallie Mae out of lots of interest $.
 
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smellthejeta said:
Dang. My private salliemae loans are @ 8.0% right now, and my federal loans through sallie mae are locked in @ 2.875%. 36 ontime payments chops 1.0% off the federal loans! I have a third loan through citizens bank (I think) which is at 9.0%.

As far as houses being cheaper than school, well, the bank can take your house away. They can't really sell your diploma.

Have you checked the interest rate this month? It went up on the 1st of the month! I wish I could pay 600/mo but between college and flight training my schooling cost in the 100k ball park, and I didn't even go to a Aeronautical college. My school did not even have a flight club. Oh well, it motivates me to work a little harder I guess. Anyone else doing the CC 0% interest thing to save money in the long haul?
 
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My Key Bank loan just went into repayment this month. I'm sitting at 7.3% variable. It's like paying for apartment rent. I called Keybank about consolidation. They are !@#holes. They have set intrest rates for consolidation and if you chose to consolidate you no longer have the right to put your loan in forbearance or defer for ANY reason. Also, changing my loan repayment from 15 years to 30 years only changes my minimum monthly payment by $10 because the intrest rate skyrockets with the longer term.

I'm going to look into a private consildation with Nelnet later this week. They're one of the few places where you can do that. That's who I consolidated my federal loans with. So far so good.

The bottom line for any new pilots reading this: DO NOT TAKE OUT PRIVATE LOANS FOR FLYING. There are no good lenders anymore.

g
 
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Way2Broke said:
Anyone else doing the CC 0% interest thing to save money in the long haul?

The whole 0% credit card thing doesn't sound like a good idea. For one thing... With debt like 'we' have how much of a credit line do you think you'll really get? Also, if you miss a payment you're going to get a default rate of 20%-30%. I don't know, it just seems to me the best thing to do is elimante as much revolving debt as possible not apply for more of it.

g
 
Way2Broke said:
Have you checked the interest rate this month? It went up on the 1st of the month! I wish I could pay 600/mo but between college and flight training my schooling cost in the 100k ball park, and I didn't even go to a Aeronautical college. My school did not even have a flight club. Oh well, it motivates me to work a little harder I guess. Anyone else doing the CC 0% interest thing to save money in the long haul?

I checked it when I posted. All of my loans originated between 1998 and 2002. Going back to Riddle freed up some cash flow -- company pays for most of my classes, and I get a reprieve from my loan payments. The cool thing with graduate work is that one class is enough to keep you from paying your loans.
 
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