Federal direct loan consolidation is a common way for people to avoid paying huge monthly payments on their student loans and to help make things much easier for those same folks. With direct student loan consolidation, a person can take their numerous federal student loans and combine them into one loan. There are many reasons why a person might want to do this, including to lower their payments, change their payment terms, and to start working with a better lender. Whatever the case, the benefits to making this move are many and the downfalls are very few.With federal direct loan consolidation, payments can be lowered by a large percentage. That is the primary reason why a person might choose to make such a move. In short, if you combine your loans and use the right consolidation plan, you could save up to 53% on your monthly payment each month. Depending upon how much of a student loan you have to repay, this could be a huge amount of money every month to go back into your pocket. Imagine being able to put that extra cash towards something that actually needs a little bit of financial attention.What type of loans can be consolidated under this specific plan? There are a number of them and each has its own benefits. Stafford Loans and the popular PLUS loans are the two that are most commonly consolidated. These federal loans are common and popular among many of America’s students, so any consolidation plan would have to include those. In addition to that, if you college or university happens to be a direct lending school, then all of your loans can consolidated under this plan. Check with your local bursar’s office about that in order to figure out if you qualify.When you choose to consolidate your federal student loans, you are making the choice to not only lower your payments, but to lengthen your loan term. In layman’s terms, this means that you will probably go from paying the standard length of ten years to having to pay the loan over a period of thirty years. This may seem like a stretch, but with the amount of relief that it provides, it could be very beneficial. There are other reasons why one might choose consolidation, as well, that could benefit a person financially in the long run.When you consolidate during a certain period of time, you may be able to receive a lower interest rate. Typically, this change will be no more than one percentage point. With a large student loan, this can be a huge amount of money, though. Depending upon which student loans you have, you could save thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.Direct student loan consolidation is something that many students are considering these days. With the number of benefits and the relatively minor drawbacks, it is something that everyone should think long and hard about.
