10 Essential Tips For Student Borrowing

If you are currently looking for a student loan then here are 10 things which you need to think about carefully before committing yourself to a loan:

1. Begin by looking carefully at the award letter for your course and work out just which need based loans you qualify for and how much money these loans would provide you with.

2. Then, look at your overall financial picture including things like education costs, the provision of any scholarship or grant money and money being provided by your family and work out how much money you need to borrow.

3. Never borrow more than you need. Regardless of how much money a lender offer you, do not borrow more than you need to meet your short and medium term needs.

4. Consider working as a supplement or alternative to borrowing.  You may think that working a job while attending college is something of an additional burden but it might be a lot better than being weighed down with high loan repayments once you have graduated.

5. Apply for any student loans as soon as you can. You need to ensure that you get the loans you need and that your money arrives before your bills start to appear, so do not delay once you know how much you need to borrow and get your application in without delay.

6. Make sure that you follow the instruction on any loan application as mistakes could well lead to your application being turned down or to a delay in the receipt of funds.

7. If you have applied for Stafford or Direct student loans then you should not be surprised if the amount that you receive is less than the amount you applied for because a fee of up to 4% will be deducted from your loan. This deduction will be made prior to the check being sent to your college.

8. As soon as you have your first student loan you need to keep a track of your borrowing to determine just what your monthly repayments are going to be at a later date. It is far too easy to get lulled into a false sense of security as long as you are attending college and not having to make repayments, but you might well be in surprised once you have left college when you see what your monthly repayments are. There are several student loan calculators available online which will look after the complicated repayment mathematics for you.

9. If you find, having taken on as much federal loan debt as you can, that you still need additional loans from a private lender then take professional advice before starting your search for additional funding.

10. If you decide to take on additional private loan funding then you will have to carefully rework your budget to account for the servicing of any additional loans while you are in college.