Can CFS Student Loan Help You?
You are now in the stage of paying back your loans after having finished your college education and taking loans for them. You have many different loans that need to paid back, similar to the condition of almost every graduate. This is very difficult to manage specially with varying interest rates for all loans. To solve this problem and get rid of all the confusion, you can consolidate all of your loans into one new loan where you pay only one payment per month on a fixed interest rate, usually lower than what you were paying before hand. Collegiate Funding Services, or CFS as they are also called, are what you are looking for when searching for help on this. Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loan receivers are helped by CFS in consolidating their loan deals. In the last three years, however, FFELP has undergone many changes. your interest rate is calculated by taking into account the average of all your existing loans at the time they are being consolidated. Then 12.5% is added to this figure to get your new interest rate. However, your interest rate will not increase the 8.25% mark as it is capped on that amount. Few other changes were made to the conditions and terms applicable to married couples with different loans; it is no longer possible for them to consolidate both of their loans into one new loan deal, they are nonetheless allowed to do so separately.
CFS student loan consolidation is only given to those who have graduated, with those who apply before graduation not being offered a deal until after their graduation. One benefit of such a deal is that your credit rating will not be checked and neither will you be charged any additional fees on consolidation. This is very preferable as almost all of the students still in college are yet to develop a credit report and thus usually find themselves pressed hard when applying for consolidation.
However, CFS does demand other requirements so as to be able to be eligible to apply for consolidation. First and foremost, your loan deals should add up to a value of at least $7500. Defaulted loans cannot be consolidated. There are also other terms and conditions in effect that most students find very beneficial, with the option of electronic payments available to the students. Those students who apply within six months of their graduation can be given a grace period interest reduction of .6%, with the promise of more interest rate reductions if payment is done regularly and punctually, however there are no penalties on repayment and payment of a loan exceeding $60000 is allowed up to 30 years of pay back time.
It is clear that consolidation can help you in many ways than one and the skilled and friendly CFS staff can help you in making the right decision.
