How to Choose a Stafford Loan Lender
Find a lender who offers lower fees to save money down the road.
Your child should apply for a Stafford loan in the late spring or early summer before heading off to college because processing the loan can take four to six weeks. When the school participates in the Federal Direct Student Loan Program, you don’t have to scout around for a lender — the school’s financial-aid office will tell you how to apply.
If you have an FFEL Stafford loan, you can choose your own lender. The interest rate and loan terms will be the same just about anywhere you go, although it’s possible to find a lender offering slightly lower fees to attract more student-loan business. The differences aren’t huge, so it doesn’t pay to spend a lot of time shopping for a lender, but checking with a few might save you a little money down the road.
With whom does your lender work?
If you want to trim your child’s costs in repayment, look for a lender that sells its student loans to Sallie Mae. The Student Loan Marketing Association, aka Sallie Mae, is the largest buyer of student loans on the secondary market (where banks sell their loans to raise additional money to lend). Sallie Mae owns about one-third of all student loans. In order to make its packages of student loans most appealing to investors, Sallie Mae offers incentives for student borrowers to repay on time, including:
- A one-fourth-percentage-point break for setting up automatic loan payments from a bank account, and
- A one-percentage-point break in the interest rate after you make four years of on-time payments, which is effortless with automatic debits.Continue reading→