Jane wrote to me through the GetOutOfDebt.org site and asked the following question. If you have a credit or debt question you’d like to ask just use the online form. I’m happy to help you totally for free.
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“Dear Steve,
My husband & I have been married 6 years and have two children. One of us has been in school the entire time until he graduated a few months ago. He has a well-paying job now and I’m self-employed. We have a decent income for where we live, but now with the school loans needing to be payed back and having a lot of credit card debt to make it through those school years, we’re having a very hard time making all of our payments. We have a federal school loan payment, a private loan payment, and credit card payments.
Is there any safe way to combine these payments (federal school loans, private school loans, and credit cards) so we’re not making so many large payments each month?
Jane”
The Answer:
Dear Jane,
Oh would if it could be true. No.
On the federal loans, check out the IBR repayment plan. IBR stands for Income Based Repayment and that might give you some room.
For the credit card debt you can check out a debt management program. While interest rates may be lowered, your monthly payment will remain the same.
For private student loans, yep, you’re screwed on those.
Depending on how much you owe, you could always check out something like LendingClub.com and see if a group of small investors would be willing to fund a loan to consolidate your debt.
