Now, as much as I envy those rich kids with parents paying tens of thousands of dollars for their college education, I’m proud of the fact that I am responsible enough to work and pay my own way, and then get a loan for whatever I could not afford!

Ok, with the rantings aside, assuming that you also have a student loan you have to pay back, you probably know that compared to most other loans, you have a pretty low rate already.

Unfortunately for those of us that had to get more than one student loan because one didn’t cover it all, some rates are higher than others, and paying separate loans usually costs more than pay for one loan (assuming the same total), it has become a smart thing to consider student loan consolidation, so that you can take advantage of the low available rates and put all the loans in to one, which also makes life easier too.

So, should you consider student loan consolidation? It depends. Back in the days (the 80s-90s), interest rates were a bit higher and it usually was a great deal to keep those relatively low rates and long terms so that it would be less of a burden to the borrower in the long run.

Now a days, due to lower and lower interest rates, it might be a better idea to get your own low interest rate loan to pay off the student loan if you had a fixed student loan rate that’s higher than what you can get now.

If on the other hand, you have one of those variable rate student loans, then you should be ok since the rates will drop if current rates are lower than before.

The bottom line is to compare the rates of your existing student loan to what you would be able to get right now and see if it makes sense to consolidate.