Friday, August 29, 2008

Government Assisted Consolidation Loans - The Free Federal Program to Consolidate Your Debt and Save

Do you have some federal student loans that are choking your monthly budget? Then the U.S. government may have just the cure with their Government Assisted Consolidation Loans. They are a federal program designed to merge all your debts and bills into a single payment.

This means, that if you have several monthly payments or a number from several different loans, you can make things easier by consolidating them into one single loan to pay off the total debt. This offers you an easy to manage payment, and in most cases, at a lower rate of interest.

The official term for this government program is called Direct Consolidation loans and they are provided to U.S. citizens by the Department of Education.

These Direct Consolidation loans are funded directly by the U.S. government instead of a private lender or financial institution. They allow borrowers to lock in low interest rates and extend their repayment period beyond that provided by the original loan. This results in lower monthly payments for the duration of the new consolidated loan.

How You Qualify For The Program

As stated at the beginning, you must have outstanding federal student loans. Then you must qualify based on your need which is evaluated on the basis of your income, family size and the total outstanding balance of your federal student loans.

Some Benefits Of The Government Assisted Consolidation Loans:

  • The ability to defer payments up to 3 Years
  • No payments for the first 6 months
  • No loan origination costs or fees for consolidation
  • Extended loan payment period of up to 30 years.