More than 90% of student loans are federal loans, and with good reason: the federal student loan programs are broadly accessible and have a range of borrower protections. However, some borrowers choose private student loans either to borrow or to refinance. A smaller share of families use non-education loans such as home equity lines or 401k loans to pay for…
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Student Loans
Families who borrow for college have a lot of choices: federal or private student loans, personal loans, home equity loans, 401k loans… How do you decide? Let’s look at pros and cons of some of these, starting with the federal loan programs. Federal direct loans– whether student or parent loans– have a number of benefits: Fixed interest rates Income-driven repayment…
Now that the May Treasury auction has taken place, student loan interest rates for the 2021-2022 school year are set. This year’s yield on the 10-year treasury was 1.684%, up about 1% from a year ago. Since student loan interest rates are fixed markups from the May treasury yield, that means student loan interest rates will go up about 1%…
Looking for more decision-making tools? Try College Scorecard, the Department of Education’s website designed to help students and families compare the cost and value of different colleges. College Scorecard provides institution-level and field-of-study-level data on everything from admissions rates to post-graduation salaries to status of student loan repayment. How might you use it? Suppose your student is debating between a…
Before your student chooses a college– or starts dreaming of an unaffordable one– here’s some data they need to see. A recent Harris Poll on behalf of CNBC Make It’s “Middle-Aged Millenials” series showed that more than half of older millenials– those aged 33-40– regret taking out student loans. Of 1,000 such adults surveyed, the average amount borrowed was just…