It will save you money on all those monthly payments. I've been in school for 7 years so yeah...imagine the loans! There are so many companies offering it right now so you do have many choices for repayment and rates. When I met with Jenny Karst (she is AWESOME) about getting a mortgage, one of the first things she mentioned was for me to consolidate my loans when I finish school. One thing to keep in mind is if you have loans that your parents took out for you early in school (parent plus loans) you may not be able to consolidate them with your loans.

Because I have a car loan with Chase they of course send me stuff. And they offer a decent rate and I've liked having them for my car loan. If your having trouble with payments one month they're totally cool about making payment arrangements or if your payment date doesn't work they'll change it.

http://sggl.chaseloanconsolidation.com/

SallieMae.Com

Also offers consolidation and has a lot of info on the site.

I guess personally I would go with a "major" company. I had a bunch of smaller student loans that eventually got sold to the big guys and yeah, it was confusing. I've found it's less likely to happen if you just go with a bigger company to start with. That and I'm always a little skeptical of consolidators that try and send me a check or something. 

I also funded all of my college through loans, but I had a couple different kinds that caused some issues while consolidating. I had federal loans (unsubsidized and subsidized stafford). And I had personal loans for students.

Many of these consolidation companies only will consiolidate the federal loans. So, that was only half of the debt I have. The only way for me to consolidate my personal loans is to get another personal loan big enough for them all.

If you do have federal, make sure to ask the company if there are penalties for paying it off early. It is crazy, but some companies will hide this little fact so they can charge you more money if you are paying more than your monthly minimun.

 Also, check your bank to see if they will finance your consolidation. 

Hello!

I work in student loans, after they have defaulted.  I don't have a lot of info but might be able to help.

Things to remember about consolidation:

If you are in default, you need to make a few payments before you can consolidate

You can only do it once

Since your repayment term may lengthen (one of the benefits) you will end up paying more in interest overall on the loan

If you can consolidate everything, it makes one payment for you and it's easier to make sure you pay it every month

Variable interest rate loans will be locked in at a fixed rate

My loans are through citibank; they have been great.  And I do believe they take personal and stafford loans.

Check out ed.gov.  Stafford loans are backed by the feds and they have a lot of good info without any sales pitches.

Finally, with all due respect to the last poster, debt elimination companies sometimes have hidden fees and are not always the best way to go.  If all you need to do is consolidate, any financial institution worth their salt can walk you through consolidation.

 

Good luck!

Why are you consolidating?

Remember that everything you do can change your profile to a potential creditor. I had a Real estate client that thought she was doing the right thing by taking her 5 $3000 credit card bills (each with $10,000 limits) and consolidating them on to one credit card with a $16,000 limit. Her score dropped from 620 to 599 in 60 days because she was so close to her limit on her remaining card. It cost her almost 2 points on her mortgage.

KFT