Private College Student Loan

Can our student loan situation be helped?

My husband and I have about $120,000 worth of combined student loan debt. These were taken out over a period of about 8 years, and consist of 11 separate loans from 6 different lenders including Sally Mae, AES, ACS, Perkins, Nelnet and Citibank. We're on graduated loan repayment for these, and our payments are totaling about $830/month. I was wondering if we could consolidate these through a private bank and possibly reduce the interest or the payment amount. Can somebody please tell me if we have any better options, we're a little bit in over our heads and would really appreciate any thing that eases up this tension, even if only a little bit. Thank you.

Public Comments

1. Have you tried consolidation through the Federal Governments DIRECT LOAN CONSOLIDATION. I called some private consolidation companies and they said they can't consolidate loans like they used to, especially government loans. I just consolidated all of mine through them. Here is the website. Hope this helps. http://www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov/
2. A private bank will almost certainly have higher rates than the rest of your lenders. Plus, you don't really want to stretch out the repayment any longer. Since the government took over school loans last year with the healthcare bill, it is a LOT harder to consolidate. You should be able to file a form for "income based repayment" where they will reduce your payment so it's no more than a certain % of your total monthly income. I'm not positive of that percentage.... my sister makes 20,000 a year and had a 500 payment. They reduced hers to only about 390 per month. So that's about 25% of her monthly income, but each person may be different.