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can you apply for deferment or forbearance?
my loans were federal so i'm not sure if the same applies, but i thought it was for all student loans in general.
if you have account access online it should be a fairly easy process of applying for forbearance, i asked for 12 months due to financial hardship... i just can't keep up with wedding payments and the loans...
I can but the interest will continue to tack on and in a year I will be completly under water.
Roxy,
I'm so sorry that you are dealing with this! I have a private loan from one of my years at school and it makes me so sad to see how little of a dent I have made in it even over 4 years of paying it off. My best advice would be to call Sallie Mae and see if there is anything that you can do to make the payments more manageable. It doesn't do them any good to force you into a position where you are completely unable to pay. I also got a call the other day from Wells Fargo (where my private loan is from) asking me to call if I was interested in private loan consolidation. I don't know if this is increasingly becoming an option, but maybe you could look into consolidating them into a non-adjustable rate loan?
Hang in there!
With private loans, you can look into practically any bank (loan center) to have your loans consolidated with a lower interest rate. Try Chase or Wells Fargo. Now is a great time because of the low rates. I tried to do that, but who knew Federal Loans couldn't be taken over by banks? Not me, I learned the hard way. But private loans can easily be bought, and you may get a lower interest rate this way. Give them a call or go to the websites to look into it online.
I can't really offer any help other than to let you know you're not alone... I'm graduating with $80,000 in loans and have no idea how I'm paying them either. However, since you took out your loans from Sallie Mae you might be eligible for the new student loan reform that Obama passed as part of health care. It basically has the government buying the loans then caps your monthly payment at 10% of your income and forgives all loans after 20 years- put it only applies to some people. If you google it you can find news stories about it, here is one I just found real quick if you want more information.
I think the issue is the amount of money I have. No bank will give me more than 30k and they want it paid off in 10 years. Right now my payments are so high and this is over a 30 yr period. I don't know how I could manage to pay 100k off in 10 years.
Also, I am not in the public sector and make a decent salary and Obama's loan program is only for Federal loans.
Thanks for the ideas girls I do appreciate the support.
Can you get your mortgage refinanced? Either way, one of those payments have to go down in order for you to be able to afford them. Maybe you can move to a 40 yr loan or something....I know it's not an ideal situation cuz you'll pay more in interest over the years but if you can't pay your loans with what you make right now, I'd imagine they could take your home.
I hear you. Both my fiance and I have high debt loads from undergrad, and its only going to get worse once he gets into medical school and I start grad school. In my experience, it has been fairly easy to get my monthly payments adjusted, so I'd definitely call Sallie Mae and see what they can do for you. It sucks because lowering the payments means it'll take longer to pay off and you'll pay more interest...but its better to do that then start defaulting on your payments. I'm on an income sensitive payment plan and have pretty low monthly payments.
I totally feel your pain. My husband has about 90K in loan debt through Sallie Mae also. They are awful to deal with. Our payment just for his loans is $1100 a month and I have an additional 30k in student loans. My loans are through Wachovia and my interest rate is pretty low. I know that you said that no bank will give you a loan but have you tried with a cosigner? Like a parent? It seems like maybe you have already tried that but if not you should consider calling around and seeing what the banks recommend for you. Good luck. I know how frustrating it is.
Additionally, I know how frustrating it is to see the plan that Obama put in to place and have it not help you at all. My husband works for the government and it stinks that if his loans were federal he would be eligible for loan forgivness in a few years. You also might want to ask them what the terms on the loan are because I assume that your interest rate is based off of prime so it is strange that it has increased since prime hasn't increased in months. So, you might just want to call them and ask why your interest rate went up.
I agree with what mkat said... give Sallie Mae a call and try to find out what's going on with your interest rate. The adjustable interest rates on my private student loans went down quite a while ago and haven't gone up since. If they raised your rate because of a late payment or something like that, you may be able to negotiate it back down.
Good luck! I originally had my federal loans through Sallie Mae and had such a horrible time dealing with them... thankfully I consolidated with a different company and don't have to mess with them anymore!
sorry i have no advice - but really quick can someone give me the rundown on that new bill? I have 2 student loans - one is federal ($16,000 left to pay off, orig. $20,000) and the private is still around $19k...
luckily I got locked in at a rediculously low interest rate and pay $65/month for now and that will only go up to about $100 in a few years...my fed loan, however, is $215/month.
I realllly hope you find something that works! CAN you refinance your loans to get a better rate at all?
Call Sallie Mae and explain your situation. There are several things they can do.
@mkat88- Do you have a fixed interest rate with Wachovia? I am looking into them now since they will refinace up to 150k, but if the rate isn't fixed I will have the same problem as I am having with Sallie Mae.
@Junebride- Can I ask who your private loans are with? Just curious to see if that lender is offering any refinancing since it seems as though there rates may be lower.
@snmcdowell- The thing about Sallie Mae is I can't even seem to get a person who speaks English. Every time I call them I just end up crying and being even more frustrated. My mother is my co-signer, I am on a graduated repayment plan for 30 years but the payment details seem to change every day with the interest rate. I have nothing to consolidate I have one loan and it's with them. But since there is no fixed rates on private loans (even though I am determined to find one) then how can they send me a proposed interest rate? I did this all three years ago so I may have missed something that could help.
I have no advice, as I'm in the same boat. Thank you for posting this.
I'm going to look into the consolidation. I'm in forbearance now because I'm back in school, but you're right, the interest just keeps accumulating ($400/month in my case)
I wish the government would do something to regulate/restructure private student loans. I had NO idea what I was getting into when I signed the papers 9 years ago :o(
@Roxy, I switched from Sallie Mae to Nelnet (not sure if you can switch) but when I did that I got on a fixed interest rate with their graduated plan which means I have a set monthly payment for 2 years then it goes up every 2 years. It just went up this November about $40/month which was doable. You may want to look into Nelnet to get away from Sallie Mae, they totally screwed me and were trying to not give me the no payments for 6 months after graduating thing. I told them to screw off and went to Nelnet, where they are always nice to me and I have had great service. Also if you pay 2.5 or 3 years of ontime loans it lowers your interest rate 1%, and lowers it .5% if you do automatic deduction (which helps with the never missing a payment).
I hope you find a solution that works for you, I totally understand how sucky student loans can be and crying over them. I've been there, just keep your head up and hopefully you'll find a solution.
@hotchildinthecity- I agree the government needs to do something. How are people going to be able to buy house and have kids, it's crazy! When I was 17yrs old and signed a couple of papers to go to school I never thought that it would take control over my life.
@roxy: I know. I've been thinking about writing a letter to the president or something and now I'm sure of it. Unfortunately I did not qualify for financial aid because my parents made "too much" (we were middle class so I have no idea how that's possible) Even with a $10K/year scholarship, that still left me owing $13K/year. I remember sitting with my parents (all of us completely clueless) while the loan people told us that the payment would be $250/month when I got out of school. It's now $700/month, accruing $400/interest a month. It just does not make ANY sense to me.
consolidation - that is what I did. course, I consolidated mine back in 04 or 05 - which is how I got locked in at such a low rate (and it is graduated - which means now it's a smaller payment but will go up in a few years...) my federal loan is pretty much always going to be the $215.
My private loan - "Key Alternative Loan" is through Key Bank.
My federal consolidation loan is through Goal Financial.
@hotchild - ooooh that was one of my BIGGEST peeves during the whole process - since my parents were considered "middle class" i could NEVER get any grants - no instead I (and my parents who also took out $40,000 on me - so $80,000 total...) had to go into MORE debt because my parents made "too much money" which is absolute BULL - because why would the gv't take into consideration that my parents had other bills and a mortgage and another kid...no - they must have thought my parents just gave me their paychecks or something (that woulda been nice! lol)
but yeah. sorry vent over. :P
@hotchildinthecity- I didn't qualify for any aid either. It's ridiculous that if you family makes a combined gross income of 100k or more than they think you can afford 40k per year per child in college tuition. I swear Sallie Mae are loan sharks. I remmeber sitting on my stairs with my dad cryin for hours over how much my monthly payments were going to be. I just want to know how much they will be every month because we are on a tight budget and I can't afford the fluxuating payments.
I'm sorry you are in over your head. I don't have any advice for you. Just remember that you can't get rid of student loans in bankruptcy so I would recommend just buckling down and trying to get them paid off.
Roxy821 -I have private loans with Sallie Mae, more than 100K. And trust me, I've been dealing with the same situation. I used the graduated repayment option for a while. You can change your payment options with them without going into forbearance. You can do it online, bc their customer service stinks--they route most calls to another country. It's not the best option, to be honest, but there really aren't very many options for private loans. At the very least, paying the interest will keep you in good standing and keep your credit rating healthy so that hopefully you can consolidate in the future. I'm not an expert by any means, but I have been dealing with private loans through Sallie Mae for the past 3 years and this pretty much as far as I've come with them.
@MissAsB- I know that and I never mentioned filing bankruptcy I just am having a hard time having a payment that every month is going up 100's of dollars.
@LovetheBear- Thanks. I will look into this online. Does the graduated repayment plan seem to be the best option?
Maybe you could transfer some of it over to a low interest credit card? It would possibly save you on interest.
I wasn't saying that you were thinking of declaring bankruptcy. Some people don't know that so I was just putting it out there. I didn't mean to offend you.
@MissAsB- Unfortunately I don't use credit cards much so I only have a total of 13,000 in available credit cards. I need to refinace 100k at a fixed interest rate. If my payment is 800 a month I'll pay 800, but I keep everything on a tight budget and I went to go pay my bill this morning and realized that I can't afford it this month because I didn't budget an increase. Sorry didn't mean to get snappy. I work hard and pay all my bills and sacrafice every extra possible so I do not think bankruptcy is an out even if the school loans would go away.
I understand. I would never want to go into bankruptcy. I am shocked how bad student loans are and I can't believe the government let it get so bad. I really hope that you can find a way to refinance it.
Sorry I didn't respond to you sooner. So my loan with Wachovia is a variable rate but my rate is currently super low. Like 2.75% low. I realize that it will undoubtably go up at some point but it is great for me now. The customer service is a great. I'm sure you probably already figured this out by calling but if your loan is private you probably cannot get the graduated plan. My husband tried to get that on his Sallie Mae loans and was told that it is only good for federal loans. Good luck.
I would talk to your bank or local credit union and see if you can consolidate your private loans with them. I have a private loan from a national bank and it also has an adjustable interest rate. I graduated almost 2 years ago and my rate started at 6% and hasn't gone up at all. Something seems wrong with your loan. Have you missed any payments or been late on some? That can negatively affect the loan as well, as they can up your interest or charge late fees. Being on time with your payments is super important.
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I need some help or advice if anyone has any.
So I went to college for four years. I took out 15k each year from Sallie Mae, since the interest calculated while I was in school I came out owing 100k.
Since they are private and not federal every month this year my loans have increased at least $75 per month, I have an adjustable rate loan. In January my payment was 500 and in April it is already up to 800. I can't keep up with it. I don't know what to do except cry every day. I am in so deep over my head that I just bought a house and with these increasing loan payments I won't be able to pay my mortgage or put food on the table.
Does anyone have any advice for private loans?