Student Financial Education Services presents students with advice for dealing with loans.
by STUDENT FINANCIAL EDUCATION SERVICES
This article originally appeared in The Tiger on February 24, 2012 | PRINT
Understanding Your Student LoansThe majority of college students have them: student loans. Student loans have increased in popularity in recent years, mostly due to the increasing tuition rates seen across the country. As you near the end of your tenure here at Clemson, there are a few things to keep in mind that will better prepare you to deal with your student loans.
Where do I find my loans?
If you are like many students, you remember receiving the many pieces of mail over the past four years detailing your loans, but now you cannot seem to find the information. You most likely know your loans by the types of loans they are, like Stafford Loan, Perkins Loan and others. These loans are not all made by one company, but are sold off and serviced by a wide variety.
There is an easy-to-use resource to help locate all of your student loans and who they are owned or serviced by. The website to help you locate your student loans is http://www.nslds.ed.gov/nslds_SA/.
If you have private loans, such as those often made by banks or financial companies such as Discover, Citi, Bank of America or others, you may need to contact that financial institution directly, as their information is sometimes not located in the online database.
How do I pay my loans?
Once you graduate, you should be proactive about finding out when you need to start paying your student loans back.
Graduating from college can be a hectic time, and with all the address changes that you may be going through, it?s easy for mail to get misplaced or sent to the wrong address. It is the responsibility of the borrower, which would be you, to make contact with the owner or servicer of your loan(s) in order to find out when payments begin.
The owner or servicer of your loan will most likely offer you several options for repaying your loans, although not all companies offer these options, and some companies may offer more options. Here are a few basic options:
Standard Repayment: Think of this payment option as a standard loan, you make fixed payments that do not change from month to month for the standard repayment period (which is typically 10 years).
Extended Repayment: This payment option is similar to the standard payment option, except the payment period (which is the time it takes to pay back the loan) will be longer than the standard period. This type of repayment plan may be beneficial to those who have extremely large amounts of student loans and cannot afford the monthly payment under the standard repayment plan.
Graduated Repayment: A graduated repayment plan offers the advantage of allowing you to make lower monthly payments right when you get out of school with the monthly payment increasing every set period of time (such as every two or three years). This type of repayment plan is based on the ideal that your income will increase over time.
Income Dependent Repayment: This payment plan is available in certain government loan situations and allows the borrower to pay a certain percentage of their income toward the loan until the loan is paid off or until a time limit of 25 years is reached. If the time limit of 25 years is reached, the government will forgive the remaining balance on the debt, although tax implications may apply.
Although these are just a few of the standard payment options, it is important to keep your current situation in mind when determining which payment plan is right for you. It is also important to think of the payment plan in terms of which will cost you the most in interest, as opposed to those repayment plans that will accrue the least amount of interest. Students are responsible for verifying the information in this article prior to making financial decisions.
If you would like additional information on student loan payment plans or help understanding your student loan situation, please visit the Student Financial Education Office located in The Union, Office 805. You can set up an appointment by emailing us at sfes1@clemson.edu or calling us at (864) 656-7337.
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Source: http://witlines1.blogspot.com/2012/02/lesson-on-student-loans.html
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