student loan consolidation calculator -finances by creating new low monthly payment.

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Student loan consolidation is a refinancing program. This program reduces your monthly payment up to 60%, simplifies your finances by creating new low monthly payment, locks in your interest rates, improves your credit rating, saves your money and provides flexible repayment options.

Consolidation can significantly reduce students monthly payment burden. Depending on the amount of students education debts, loan consolidation allows them to extend their repayment period from the standard 10 years up to 30 years. The lower payment, indeed, allows students to meet other house hold expenses, including car payments and career related necessities.

Federal Stafford Consolidation, PLUS Loan Consolidation, Direct Loan Consolidation, Perkins Loans, HEAL Loans, and all Federal FFELP and Direct Loans are the best consolidations for the US students.

Student Loan Consolidation Calculator

Student loan consolidation payment calculator calculates students monthly savings. This calculator computes an estimate of the size of students monthly loan payments and the annual salary required to manage payments without too much financial difficulty. It can be used with Federal education loans like namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" Stafford, Perkins and PLUS and most private student loans. The student loan consolidation calculator can also be used as an auto loan and mortgage payments calculator.

Interest rate: Student loan calculator assumes that the rate remains constant throughout the life of the loan. The fixed interest rates of the Federal Stafford Loan, the Federal PLUS loan and Perkins loans are 6.8%, 8.5% and 5% respectively. Besides, loan calculator also assumes that the loan will be repaid in equal monthly installments through standard loan amortization. However, the calculated results will not be accurate for some of the alternate repayment plans, such as graduated repayment and income contingent repayment.

Some educational loans have a minimum monthly payment. Students should enter the appropriate figure in the minimum payment field such as $50 for Stafford Loans, $40 for Perkins Loans and $0 for PLUS Loans. They need to enter a higher figure to see how much money they can save by clearing their debt faster.

The most popular calculators are the College Cost Projector, Savings Plan Designer and Expected Family Contribution and Financial Aid Calculator.

College Cost Projector

College costs, certainly, increase at about twice the inflation rate. Current increases have averaged 5% to 8%. When a student is ready to enroll, the College Cost Projector estimates how much college will cost. There are two fields in this cost projector. They are the ?Current-One-Year-Cost? field and the ?Years until Matriculation? field.

In the "Current One-Year Cost" field, students should enter the total cost of attendance, including tuition, fees, room and board, books, travel and incidental expenses. The College Board\'s Trends in College Pricing will decide the average total costs for the students attending two-year and four-year public colleges and universities, and also for the out of state students.

In the "Years until Matriculation" field, students need to enter the number of years until they enroll in college for the first time. Generally, a student who just started the freshman year in high school will matriculate in four years and a newborn baby will matriculate in approximately 17 years.

Savings Plan Designer (Flat Contribution)

This calculator shows how much money students, in order to reach their savings goals, must contribute each month to an interest-bearing bank account or investment fund.

Parents? savings target should be at least one-third to half the projected costs of their child\'s college education. When the child is born, the savings plan should be established in the parents? name. For example, to reach $35,000, parent would need to contribute $25.12 per week for 17 years to an account that earns 5% interest.

Students should try to analyze the effectiveness of their current savings plan. For that they need to use the Savings Growth Projector instead to calculate the growth potential of their current contributions.

Expected Family Contribution (EFC) Calculator

The EFC Calculator is an online form used to calculate the expected family contribution and financial need. It is also used to estimate students financial aid. EFC ensures customer?s privacy and is a free service.

Students and their parents should fill out this form after thoroughly reading the caveats. This form calculates the EFC for a single year, so parents/students need to enter school costs, scholarships and financial information accordingly.

Each section of this form includes more detailed instructions for the items in that section. Using this from is as easy as just fill out the form and press the "Calculate" button at the bottom of the form.

There are two kinds of methodologies in calculating EFC. They are the ?Federal Methodology? and the Institutional Methodology. The Federal Need Analysis Methodology is used by the Federal processor and school financial administrators. The Institutional Methodology is related to private colleges and universities. FinAid?s Calculator is useful to figure out students? school costs, needed savings and financial aids.