Common Types Of Student Loans

Federal Student Loans

Federal student loans are provided by a financial institution, and are guaranteed by the federal government. The best federal government student loans are called Stafford loans. Almost anyone is eligible to receive Stafford loans - eligibility isn’t determined by the borrower’s credit.

In order to be eligible for most types of government student loans, one must be a student or prospective student who has filled out a FAFSA, must have financial need as determined by your college or university, must be a U.S. citizen, a U.S. national, a U.S. permanent resident, or eligible non-citizen of the U.S. You also must not be in default on any educational loan.

Federal college student loans comes in two varieties, subsidized and unsubsidized. Subsidized student loans provide the borrower with a lower interest rate, because the government subsidizes the loan. You can qualify for one amount to be subsidized, and then the rest will be unsubsidized.

While there are quite a few alternative student loans out there, you shouldn’t try to use them until you have maxed out your Stafford student loans. It isn’t likely that there is a better deal than the Stafford. Stafford is available for both undergrad and graduate student loans and are basically the best student loans out there.

Since these loans are available to anyone that hasn’t defaulted on an educational loan, they are often called guaranteed student loans. They are also low interest student loans, currently falling in at about 6%.

Bad Credit Student Loans

Believe it or not, most federal student loans are offered to everyone, regardless of their credit history. Stafford loans are available to anyone - even to individuals that have poor credit. Perkins loans are also available to individuals that have poor credit, although they are only available to those who are at a severe financial disadvantage. Getting student loans with bad credit is fairly simple, as long as you don’t have an educational loan in default. For this reason, many people call Stafford and Perkins loans ‘no credit check student loans’. Alternative student loans will usually require a credit check

If you have poor credit, you will also want to look into the possibility of getting Pell grants. They are available to anyone who is deemed to be in need by their college or university.

Direct Student Loan

The direct student loan is provided directly by the U.S. Department of Education, who acts as a lender for Stafford loans. To qualify for a direct student loan, one must attend a participating institution, fill out a FAFSA, and create a master promissory note. This program is available for both graduate and undergraduate student loans.

Since the federal loan programs work regardless of credit history, they are truly amazing. For a fast student loans no cosigner application, visit the official government site.

International Student Loans

International student loans are provided mainly by private lenders. There currently is no federal program for this. The government really has no incentive to provide student loans for international students since most of them will not be paying taxes here in the U.S. However, there are plenty of options for people who are willing to work with a private lender.

Many of the private lenders who offer this type of loan for international students are willing to offer grace periods that make the loans quite desirable.

How Do I Find The Cheapest Student Loans When Rates Are Getting Higher?

Why Rates Are Climbing!

February of this year Congress decided to slash $12.7 billion over the next five years from the federal student-loan program and boost interest rates on the most popular loans.

A few weeks earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the government even more power to go after delinquent student loans, even if the borrower is elderly or disabled. It is clear that a student needs to limit student-loan debt.

If your total borrowing exceeds the salary you expect to make in your first year out of school, you may be borrowing too much to begin with.

Congress has been signaling for sometime that the days of cheap loans were numbered. The government had to pay subsidies to student lenders for many of those consolidated loans and missed out on the higher interest rate of loans it generated itself. It was subsidizing long-term loans at short-term rates and they said, NO MORE!

Where Should A Student Look First?

When we speak of cheap student loans, clearly we mean that the loan should be of a lower interest rate. There are many ways available to a student where he can get a loan at a cheap rate.

The best-considered way is to look for student loans that are sponsored by the state government who provide subsidy on the loans and the student pays less interest on them. Such cheap student loans come at relaxed repayment duration and options as well.

In case you are taking a student loan from a private lender, then the rate of interest gets cheaper if you are willing to provide some security to the lender. Of course a student usually does not own property, and so his parents take the loan out for the student on offering the security.

On securing the loan amount the lender will surely offer a cheaper rate of interest. If a student has bad credit due to late payments or payment defaults on previous loans, the best way to over come that problem is to have a co-signer. Your parents or any person who has good credit can co-sign for a student loan.

Excellent or good credit of the co-signer gives more assurance of the safe return and the lender therefore, is wiling to reduce the rate of interest. Make sure to compare lenders who claim of providing cheaper rates on student loans for a suitable deal.

And the last consideration for a student loan with somewhat of a better option is a home-equity loan. Currently fixed home-equity rates are in the 7 percent to 8 percent range for people with good credit. Depending on the amount borrowed, you may be able to get a longer payback term with home-equity borrowing than with many other loans.

Interest payments on most government loans are tax-deductible up to $2,500 and you don’t have to itemize. Interest on home-equity loans is deductible on loan amounts up to $100,000, but you have to be able to itemize to take advantage of this break.

Also, if you are the student, you will most likely have to have your parents willing to help you out in this area with their home.

The best word of advice; work as much as you can before and during your college years and if you do take out a loan, use moderation, prudence and forethought.

Student Debt Consolidation Terms

This is going to be a simple start to defining what consolidation is and how it is done to help out with the financial situations of many students and former students out there. These terms will be important for any person to understand as you go through this web site.

Debt consolidation-

This means taking out a loan to pay off several other loans. The intention behind this is to secure a lower interest rate or to establish a fixed interest rate that otherwise may not have existed before. Some loans that are consolidated from several to one, really have the exact same rates, but the intention is to save time by focusing on just one loan instead of trying to pay off several loans. Debt consolidation can be transferred from several unsecured loans to an unsecured loan of some kind, but more often it is transferred to a secured loan.

Secured Loans-

The borrower pledges some asset like a car or property as collateral for the loan. If the borrower defaults (not able to pay the loan) then the debt may be satisfied by the lender taking possession of the object and by selling off the collateral to pay for the debt. This is legally done under the Bundle of Rights laws for property ownership.

Unsecured Loans-

This is simply any type of a loan where there isn’t collateral required in return for a loan in case the borrower was to default. These are often more difficult to get and require impressive credit to do so.

Collateral-

An object such as a car or a house that a creditor can repossess in case the borrower fails to make a payment on a loan. The lender can use the collateral and sell it to erase the debt or just simply keep it for their purposes. This portion of a loan contract may create a lower interest rate.

Default-

This is where the debtor has violated some form of the contract of the loan by not making a payment or violating some other condition in the terms. If they are simply unable or unwilling to pay the debt then the whole debt may be immediately required to be paid off and the creditor could take possession of any collateral.

Federal Student Loans-

The Federal Family Education Loan Program and the Federal Direct Student Loan Program consolidate loans from Stafford Loans, PLUS Loans, and Federal Perkins Loans into one single debt to pay off. This means reduced monthly repayments, a longer term for the loan, and this will have a fixed interest rate. In essence this buys you more time and you have to spend less money initially.

These will be 10-30 year terms, and yes you will pay less initially, but eventually you will pay more down the road because of interest. The interest weight is calculated as the weighted average interest rates of the other loans being consolidated. These weights are rounded up to the nearest .125% and capped at 8.25%. This gives companies a more accurate average to the amount of the loans compared to the interest rates.