My wife has a private student loan with Sallie Mae. Right now, her balance is about $34,500. There are 4 loans ranging from 8.5% to 9.75%. Right now, we are paying about $250 a month in interest only until she starts working again. She has decent credit (range from 675-695). Is there ANYTHING we can do about this loan? I seriously doubt that she can get a line of credit for that much. We don't have a home, so we can't use an equity line of credit. I was thinking about us maybe getting a bunch of 0% cards and trying to balance transfer. But after the year is up, we'd be in serious trouble because the rates would probably be up to 15-20%. This is a killer. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Are these private loans or federal loans?

These loans with Sallie Mae are private. We also have federal loans, but we aren't sweating those that much. The interest rates are decent. It's just this crazy, high, variable interest loans that have us frustrated.

Then there's really nothing you can do, except try to accelerate paying them off. Sorry.

I would NOT recommend transferring the debt to a credit card. You're just trading one type of debt for another.

Hey, thanks a lot.

If I knew that we could pay off the loan in the next year and a half by transferring them to 0% cards, then I'd do it. Since we aren't trying to buy a home for 2 years, it would be no problem. I know our scores would do down a lot by transferring installment loans to revolving loans. But when we paid them off, our score would skyrocket higher than it was. But I won't do it, because I doubt they'd be paid off within the next 6 months.

Thanks again for your help

Not to ask a stupid question, but ...whose to say you can't balance transfer student loans to credit cards and then bankrupt the credit cards? My husband's name is not on our mortgage or deed to the home (which I live in a homestead state anyway and they can't take the home) and we have completely seperate credit, not one thing jointly, he doesn't need anything we already have a home and cars.......what would be the downside to doing that? Just a thought!

The credit card companies have been know to fight these type of balance transfers. They know student loans cannot be BK'd. To transfer a large balance and then Bk on it would be fraud.

What's the down side? Are you kidding me??

The downside is that it's immoral. Probably illegal. And definitely wrong.

And creditboards NEVER condones such a thing.

Here's an option.. it's just a suggestion though!

Both you and your DW apply for at least two Citi cards each, make sure they have 0% APR for 12 months and no fees.
Both of you each do this when you get the cards. Reallocate as much of the credit lines onto one card, I think there is a minimum of 1k cl on each card. BT the student loans onto only the card with the large CL. Keep the other cards but don't utilize the BT on those cards yet. During the twelveth month, BT the balance onto another card, not Citi or pay it off temporarily. You have to do this in order to free up the CL to do another reallocation. Reallocate the large CL onto your other card and do another BT and you'll get another 12 months from that time. The Citi BT offer should be that you'll get 12 months from the time of the first BT which means you'll be getting about 24 months total, since the second 12 months won't start until your first 12 months is over.

Its kind of like this:

Card 1 - 10k
Card 2 - 10k

Reallocation

Card 1 - 19k
Card 2 - 1k

BT onto Card 1 for a year
12th month, pay off the balance or BT to a different card temporarily

Reallocation

Card 1 - 1k
Card 2 - 19k

BT to Card 2 for another 12 months at 0%

You can request credit line increases after the six month mark on the cards and then each month afterwards.

GL with whatever you do!

Hey Shady, you are great man. I really appreciate it. I would love if we could further talk in a more private manner. How do I go about getting PM privileges?

I tried to PM you but it says you have disabled the feature.. must be somewhere in your control panel.

the method i mentioned in my post can be done very safely.. as long as you're organized. theres this thing called universal default. if you haven't heard of it, the main thing about that is that if you mess up (be late or miss on a payment, go over your limit, etc) on any of your cards, any issuers can ratejack you even if you didnt mess up with them. this may lead to your promo of 0% being eliminated.

also, you should know that, like someone else posted, you're just trading a debt for another debt. i just think this is important because you will still need to pay the debt off, although doing this will save you from paying more interest.

i think you said your loan was about 34k. citi is very stingy with giving high credit limits. even if you and your dw decide to open up two each, it may not be enough to bt the 30k. i think this would be fine though because i believe your goal was to minimize paying interest, which means transferring any amount, even a low amount, to a 0% apr would be saving money.

as long as you dont give citi a reason, they will be forced to honor your 0%, so dont give them a reason

But you also need to think about the effects this will have on your credit too. Maxing out one or more credit cards can make your scores plummet. And it will be VERY difficult to explain to a mortgage lender why you did this ... Additionally, you need to take a look at what the interest rate will be AFTER the 0% ... what if you can't get another offer like that to BT it to after the first one expires?

IMHO this is way too risky and not at all prudent for this situation.