Student Loan Refinance?

[toledo]

Thanks to my financially irresponsible in-laws, we inherited about $40k in student loans. We've gotten that down to about $33k. Expected payoff date is 2035. Rates are fixed and range from 2% to 6.8%.

Ive been getting carpet bombed with junk mail to refinance them. Im financially savvy when it comes to mortgage loans but know absolutely nothing about student loans. Goals would be to reduce monthly payment while not extending term OR have more of my monthly payment go towards principal so it doesnt take until 2035 to pay them off.

Should I refinance? Consolidate into one? Pitfalls of the industry?

[DedDuk]

Curious how you inherited dept.

[mfarmer]

Your in-laws went to college and gave you their debt?

[toledo]

Curious how you inherited dept.

Wifes parents told her "you graduate, we pay your student loans, you dont, and you do". She graduated and after a few years of them making minimum payments and living large on new cars and exotic vacations, they renigged and stopped paying.

[bbqfan5909]

Pay more than min payment will help offset the interest rate. We hammered on loan right out of college, paid big 10 years later. Refinancing loan, see what “closing” would cost. Good luck

[WItoTX]

Wifes parents told her "you graduate, we pay your student loans, you dont, and you do". She graduated and after a few years of them making minimum payments and living large on new cars and exotic vacations, they renigged and stopped paying.

Wouldn't the loans be in her parents names?

Also, You can probably pay them off and roll them into your home mortgage, if you are okay with that. Whatever you do, just pay off as fast as possible. From experience, those loans suck.

[stxhunter]

Refinancing is a good option and I’ve known several that have. With that being said understand that they’ll no longer be govt loans, I.e. if she loses her job or something changes the amount due is fixed, if that matters at all to you.

With that being said we paid off my wife’s student loan of over $90k in 3yrs by paying much more than monthly minimums. I just finished my second masters and planning to pay off roughly the same amount in the same time frame. A lot of it is based on making small sacrifices and sending whatever extra you can each month to pay it down. We also targeted the loans that had the highest interest rate first rather than equally distributing payments to all the loans.

[Micahbo]

I consolidated all of mine using the company SoFi. It helped me out greatly.