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College Loan Consolidation


Danger41

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Feel free to move if this would go better elsewhere.

My wife and I were curious if it is possible to use the military to help get lower interest rates on her student loans (currently at 6.9%)? Anyone have any familiarity with something like this?

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Like ThreeHoler said, call the company that issued the loan (USAA, Sallie Mae, etc) and inform them you want your interest rate fixed as part of the servicemans civil relief act. After that they will likely either give you a number or an address for you to send your information to. Typically they want some kind of official letter head type document but just about anything with a date on it will work. I used my original appointment orders since they had the whole commitment to 20XX on it.

That should fix your loans to a 6% interest rate maximum and they cant be arbitrarily increased. Also contact your credit card company, car loan, etc, it works for anything you had when you joined the military.

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So as to not start a different thread, Has anyone had any SCRA issues with Sallie Mae? They keep raising my interest rate, claiming that my valid SCRA claim needs to be "recertified"

I have loans through Sallie Mae and when I EAD'd in 2007 I filled my SCRA claim. They were pretty good about it until two years later when my interest rate shot up to 11%. I called and they stated I needed to re-validate I was in fact on AD. I was deployed at the time and had a hard time contacting them due to the interference of all the reflective belts. I just sent them the letter I sent them in 2007 with a copy of my EAD orders and highlighted the section that stated my orders were of an indefinite timeframe. They stated they got all of the info and would process my claim once they received a letter from my SQ/CC. I once again told them I was deployed and I did not have access to my SQ/CC. Sure, I could have talked to the deployed CC, but I figured a letter signed by me plus my orders would do the trick. After a month or so, they dropped my interest rate back to 6% and refunded me the $69 of interest incurred when they bumped it up to 11%. I haven't had any issues since then.

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I have loans through Sallie Mae and when I EAD'd in 2007 I filled my SCRA claim. They were pretty good about it until two years later when my interest rate shot up to 11%. I called and they stated I needed to re-validate I was in fact on AD. I was deployed at the time and had a hard time contacting them due to the interference of all the reflective belts. I just sent them the letter I sent them in 2007 with a copy of my EAD orders and highlighted the section that stated my orders were of an indefinite timeframe. They stated they got all of the info and would process my claim once they received a letter from my SQ/CC. I once again told them I was deployed and I did not have access to my SQ/CC. Sure, I could have talked to the deployed CC, but I figured a letter signed by me plus my orders would do the trick. After a month or so, they dropped my interest rate back to 6% and refunded me the $69 of interest incurred when they bumped it up to 11%. I haven't had any issues since then.

11%!?! SM quoted me 18% fixed for my last college! Then they tried selling my loan to some other company who was jacking up the interest even more. :gun:

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Anybody know if you can use SCRA on your spouse's student loans to cap them at 6% as well? We were married before I entered active duty but the loans were taken out in her name well before we were ever married.

http://askjune.military.com/2011/12/does-scra-cover-military-spouse-debts.html

I wish there was a great search engine that could find out this information. Perhaps I shall create it, and I shall call it Google.

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I wish there was a great search engine that could find out this information. Perhaps I shall create it, and I shall call it Google.

I wish I could be your first investor.

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