FNTN

Introduction

Anyone who graduates this summer will be very lucky to be leaving college with student loan repayments of less than $30.000, which by anyone’s standard is a considerable amount of debt. Now, after graduating you may be qualified for that dream job you have always wanted but just how qualified are you to deal with repaying student loans? As with a lot of things in life you will need to break down what might seem as one massive debt problem into a series of smaller student loan repayment plans that are solvable more easily than the huge massive debt cloud breaking up over you.

Graduated and ready to start work?

Working Right after Graduating

The thought of taking a year off and travelling around to see the world after you have had years of working hard for that final graduation day might be all well and all good in the mind of a lot of students – but not if you have got some serious student loans repayments to sort out and to do. In an ideal world (and we all dream of such a picture perfect world) all that hard work you put into getting your degree will now pay dividends for you and you will quickly get on that first rung of a career ladder. However, although we are now at the start of clawing our way out of recession in the US, the job market is still a tough call and not being able to secure a job immediately on graduating could well have a negative impact on starting your college loans repayment your other student debts, unless you chose a company with a generous student loan payment plan. Even if you are a lucky one managing to get a well-paid job right after graduating, starting employment can be an expensive trip in itself – what with probably having to fit yourself out with a new wardrobe or pay for accommodation in a new city or district and so on. You might even need to take out yet another loan to get yourself all set up and ready for working. Never forget to remember – if you have got large student loan repayments to make you should keep any kind of new expenditure down to an absolute and assessable minimum.

Where did all the money go?

Paying Back the Loans and Debts

When you start to set about repaying student loans you need to first think in terms of what you owe on the actual student loans and any other student debs you may have accrued. Remember, your federal student loans were once paid to you in order for you to pay things like your college tuition fees so these loans have to be paid back under the set federal college loans repayment scheme and should also be considered as a sort of extra taxation you have got to pay back. After all, that federal student loan repayment plan can be extended up to 10 years and can even be extended to 25 years. Nevertheless, repaying student loans from other sources often need to be repaid on a shorter period time. The reason for this state is that compared to federal student loans they will probably carry higher rates of interest. Therefore, the longer you are about to take repaying these loans the more they will be costing on a long term run. At this point of talking about interest rates, you do need to keep an eye on the federal student loan repayments at least on an annual basis because these too carry an interest charge and, depending on when you received your federal student loan, it might have a variable interest rate as well.

She who spends it - has to repay it!

Student credit card debt

Student credit card debt is probably the one form of debt to be most wary of and to have a clear student loan payment plan in place to clear it. If your credit card carries an annual percentage rate (short APR) of 18% with a minimum 2% monthly repayment and you owe $6.000 on it your minimum monthly repayment rate will be calculated to being $120. While this sounds manageable the way the interest keeps being added to the outstanding debt, you do not clearly now how long it would take you at that minimum monthly repayment to clear the debt. Do you want to know? Well, it is not any shorter than an unbelievable 40 years which would, by then have cost you tens of thousands of dollars, which could seriously impair your ability of maintaining your regular student loan repayments. If that is not quite a lecture?