I wish I had known about student consolidation loans when I had graduated college back in 1995.  Actually there is a lot of financial advice I could have used back then that I know now.  Back then it was much easier to allow my big dreams to overshadow my better judgment and cause me the financial hardship I had to endure for a few years.

I had it made, or should have thought so then.  I was a recent US Army veteran and took an honorable discharge after my first term of enlistment.  That entitled me the G.I. Bill that I paid into along with Uncle Sam.  I was also a resident of Illinois before and after the Army which entitled me to the Illinois Veteran’s Grant (IVG).  The IVG paid all tuition and certain fees to any Illinois public college or university and I chose to go to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. 

While at SIUC, I was in a pre-law program and desired to go to law school upon graduation.  After 2 years at SIUC, I decided it was in my best interest to transfer to a more prestigious school so I could have a chance at a better law school.  I chose a private university located downtown Chicago.  It was a great school but since it was private I was no longer entitled to the IVG and  chose to take on direct student loans to finance my tuition.  I went from paying virtually nothing per semester except my room and board to paying over $12,000 per semester, luckily for me my dad allowed me to stay at his home while finishing college.  I had racked up nearly $40,000 in student loans but the hard thing was keeping all the loans separate since each semester a new loan was created. 

As soon as undergrad was over and I was admitted to law school, I was talked into taking a high paying job on an oil rig with an uncle of mine to help pay down my loans.  It was a huge government contract that paid extremely well, so well that I was able to purchase a new car and still make huge monthly payments.  By the end of summer, I had already paid off $10,000 of my student loan obligations and I decided that I should put off law school for one semester and I cold eliminate another 75% of my loans. 

Well, one month into that idea the company I was working for lost their big government contract and since I was one to the last guys in, I was also one of the first guys out.  Too late to run off to law school and I needed to pay for that new car I had purchased so I found a job that didn’t pay nearly as well as the last one but it paid the rent and the car note and kept me reasonably fed.  But that decision to stay instead of head back to college led to a whole series of bad financial decisions that ultimately left me in default on my student loans.

It was almost 3 years later, never did get back to law school, when I found myself on the internet searching for ways to get my student loans out of default.  At the time I had the option of filing for bankruptcy but I felt that those were my debts and I needed to handle them, though it would have been so much easier to just dump them on Joe Taxpayer.  That’s when I came across the concept of student consolidation loans.  There was a whole industry set up around student loan consolidations.  I wasn’t alone.

Student consolidation loans are easy to apply for and it really doesn’t matter what your income situation is.  There is a student loan consolidation program that can fit the needs of just about any student loan debt holder.  But here I want to talk about the program that I chose to enter, the William D. Ford Foundation that works with the Department of Education. 

The Federal Government has given former students an easy way to get back on the correct financial course.  The Department of Education has partnered with several organizations and foundations to help former students that are in default on their student loans, or close to it, to consolidate student loans into one payment and to one location.

They have developed a program of repayment that is income contingent.  That means you pay what you can afford to pay for as long as you need to.  The William D. Ford Foundation is one of those foundations that can help students get back on course and get out of debt.

The William D. Ford Foundation can help anyone that has a Direct Loan or a Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL).  If you do not have one of these types of loans then head on over to the website that is in the video above, ibrinfo.org, and they can direct you to a program that will work for you.

An Income Based Repayment plan is the way to set up your student consolidation loans and re-establish your credit worthiness, which is so important in today’s economy.