Student Loan Changes

Student loans are something that almost every student has to face unless you are one of the very few lucky ones. Student loans are given to students in need of financial aid based on their income information. Loans com in 3 different ways: Subsidized, Unsubsidized and Parent PLUS loans. The difference between Subsidized and Unsubsidized is that Subsidized is interest free until 6 months after you graduate and Unsubsidized is not interest free.

I have taken out student loans for my education and have finally started paying them off in May. You have a 6 months grace period after you graduate to find a job and get yourself stable so that you can start paying off your loans. When the paying off time comes you have a choice of consolidating your loans and keeping them separate and letting Sallie May send you one statement. Now, the trick with consolidation is that it’s best to consolidate if your interest is more than what is currently offered. For example I have 5 different loans and for all of them I have different interest rates. One has a 2.8%, 4.7% and the rest are 6.8%. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to consolidate my loans right now at 6.8% when I am paying less interest on some of my loans.

The reason I am mentioning student loans is because there have been some changes going on with student loans. In recent months my bank account has been getting charged more from Sallie May than the Sallie May website has been stating. This is like you seeing your credit card bill is $100 but you are being charged $130 a month for your bill. I decided to give them a call and I found that apparently one of my loans has been sold to the Department of Education but Sallie May still manages it.

What this means is that Sallie May is charging my bank account more so that it can also cover the other loan that is under the Department of Education. There is no specific reason why Sallie May has sold certain loans and not the others so there is no need to worry if your loan was sold. They were simply restructuring their company and this is what ended up happening.

If you see any changes in your billing give Sallie May a call as soon as possible so you can find out what is happening to your account. The man I spoke to on the phone said that most people did not get notification about this change even though they were supposed to. It’s important to keep all your information together and keep track of your payments because it’s very easy to lose track of things. Stay on top of your bill and make sure you call as soon as something doesn’t make sense to you about your payments.