here is my story

i have about 30,000 federal loans, and 120000 citi assist loans.

i was a fool who received every possible loans in my 5 long years in college. and the worst thing is that out of 150k, only 45k were 'student' loan. i borrowed money so i could i paid off my credit card debts(40k), 15k on car accidents, 20k on a trip to europe and spent thousands of dollars on living expenses.

i don't know how i spent so much money. i was doing very well in school, and i thought i would pay them all off easily.

payment starts within few months and i'm only making $3000 a month right now.

because of the loans, i even decided not to attend the grad shool(was accepted to yale)

i've read enough posts that i probably should consolidate federal loans. i heard total higher education is decent.

but what da hell am i supposed to to with 120k citi? the monthly payment looks like $1500 a month. that's a mortgage!!

can you consolidate private loans? is there anyway i can reduce the payment, so i don't live my life trying to pay off my debts?


i feel so foolish, and now i don't know what to do. this is very depressing.

somebody just shoot me. please.

Did Europe seem like a place that you could live? You might seriously consider that. Then you can pay on your terms w/o having to worry about garnishment and all that.

Please don't feel too bad about this. Unfortunately, it can be easy to get yourself into this situation if you aren't taking the long view (if it wasn't, there'd be a lot fewer of us here!) and, as you know, that's not the usual way we look at things while we're in college!

Look into consolidation for your federal loans and seriously, do talk to Citi. With them offering that much money for undergraduate loans, there is no way you're unique here. I'd venture to guess that the majority of those graduating from undergraduate with $120,000 in loans (which is Citi Assist's max for undergrad loans) that have to be paid back in 12 years (which is also Citi's max time period for repaying Assist loans) are in your same situation.

Hope this helps!! Good luck -- and good for you for realizing that this is a problem now, rather than 2 years from now after you've defaulted!

That wont even help. I cant remember which board it is on, but a borrower in Ireland is being persued thru the Irish court system for his US private loans.

thanks for advises.

i'll call citi for help, and i will consolidate my federal loans with total higher education.

if any of you think they aren't any good, please let me know and suggest me with something else.

It's been a few days since this was posted, but anyway....

I'm in a similar situation as you. I have both CitiAssist and federal loans.

If you haven't consolidated your federal loans yet, consider doing it through Citibank themselves. Their incentives are competitive with everyone else's (.25% reduction for autodebit plus 1% after 48 consecutive on-time payments), you'll lock in a low rate at least for the federal portion of your debt, and you'll have one point of contact for all your student loans, one statement, one monthly payment, one website, etc. Furthermore, when considering graduated repayment and the like, they will have access to your entire student debt portfolio in front of them, which may help these conversations in your favor.

I have no affiliation with Citibank except that I have loans with them as you do. My CitiAssist loan, which as others have mentioned is un-consolidate-able, is up near 8% right now, with autodebit. My conversations with them have indicated that the cap is at 16% for the particular product I have, so needless to say, the latest Fed meetings haven't been going in my favor.

I applied for the consolidation of my Direct Loans with Citibank just before the end of March. The whole process took about five weeks from start to end, and my first consolidation loan payment is due in June, rolled into my CitiAssist payment as one auto-debit event.

Be sure not to stretch the payments out too much or it might end up costing you way too much in the end, over the life of the debt.

Hope this helps you out.

You should be able to get a quicker interest rate reduction than 1% off after 48 months. I'd advise you to shop around a bit more. hopefully finaid.org has some calculators that you can play around with for various diferent incentives. (if it doesn't, pm me and I'll send you a link to my company's site for their loan calculator. ) the online version doesn't have incentive comparison options, so it may be better to check around for different calculators.

As for private student loans, they can be consolidated. (Mod's if this violates rules, please edit this message. ) I can give you the link to my companies website by PM only.

I'm not the OP, but I have a ton of private SLs, too, and I tried to PM you, but your box is full, or your PM'ing is off. Please PM me or e-mail me with that info. Thanks!

Kris

i'm confused. i gotta do the math, and call every one of them. i'll look into CITI as well.. even though i'm so sick of them.

consolidating w/ Citi ummm no thanks

you can find much better deals with minimal research

just submitted application to ELC. looks like they are the best.


now. what da hell am i supposed to with my citi assist loans!!

Sallie Mae wouldn't let me consolidate the two private loans I have with them.

Consolidating did help my payment, though. My payments (excluding the private loans) are $175 per month. And luckily, I only(!) have $15k in private loans, so that payment is fairly reasonable.

I have an excessive amount of SL debt too ($70k), so you're not alone.

Good luck! Maybe Citi will let you consolidate the private loans.

My PM'ing is not allowed by this board. I'll probably have to check my email acct that I registered with. I'll try to send an email on this later tonight.

I know for my company's private consolidation, the loans have to be in repayment status, or within 30 days of repayment. It'll be prime + 1%.

For the protection of everyone, newbies can't get or send PM's until they reach member status

B/c of my newbie status, I can't get your listed email or pm you. I sent an email w/ the link to the hotmail addy listed in your email for ING referrals.

Thanks genseeker for letting me know why I can't pm you.

Please proceed with extreme caution when receiving "private" information from anyone on a message board. This is why newbies are not allowed PM privileges here.

I'm going to ask that information of this type not be passed around the board. We have no way to verify anything. If you want to pass along information, then you can put the information in your signature.

I got your e-mail. Thanks! I still have a better rate with Citi currently, so I am sticking as is for now. I didn't realize that you were still a newbie (I did know that newbies cannot PM for a while, but I didn't realize that you were still one). I appreciate Quilty's caution, as well. I would not just give out my info to some random person on a message board, but I would definitely check out the information you could offer first. Just to be sure, I want Quilty to know that the OP didn't do anything shady, but I understand the risks involved, too. Anyway, thanks for your e-mail!

Kris

Just wanted to say good luck to the OP. It is really stressful to have SL debt, but you are doing the right thing by facing it head on.

My $.02 on grad school. It is good to put it off for now because of financial reasons, but don't think that this means forever. I went back to school after a LONG break and it is the best decision I ever made. Just wanted to say, debt is discouraging and you have to deal with it but it doesn't have to change your goals, it may just delay them for awhile.

I'm a newbie on the board as well and was just filling knowledge from you all's past years.

Just wanted to wish OP luck also. I also have Private SL's and believe me I searched high and low for some way to overcome. During school, I really had no distinguishing knowledge between federal and private loans, to me, they all were the same (don't worry about it or pay until I done). From my research, it takes persistance and swift moves.

FWIW, the fatwallet website financial forum has some low interest pros who have successfully reduced debt using 0% credit card balance transfer offers. Once the terms were up on one card, their method was to simply move on to another card. Unfortunately, new credit, most likely of that of a just graduate student is excellent plus it might be tough to get 120K in avaliable credit, but for some others it might be a smart move.

Quilty, to me it seems like the place to not do any marketing. All I am is a lowly phone rep for a student loan company. I'm just trying pass along whatever advice I can. The reason I requested emails/pm is b/c I didn't want to be advertising the company that has contracted my callcentre.

Kris, good luck on your dealings w/ citi.