It can be expensive and often requires you or your family to take out loans to help pay for it.Student loans fall into two categories, federal loans and private loans. It’s not a shameful or embarrassing position to be in. And, as I’ve recently learned, we have options if we aren’t afraid to pursue them. When that job finished, I moved to New York for graduate school and deferred my loans while studying for my master’s degree in education. I decided that I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore. We all have our reasons for being in this situation. After graduation, I spent a few years teaching English abroad and paid my student loans every month without fail.Private loans tend to have higher fees and interest rates than federal government loans.Private loans also do not offer the opportunities for cancellation or loan forgiveness that are available on many federal loan programs.

An education beyond high school is an investment in your future.For more information, visit our Repayment plans section.Close Consolidation can be a good repayment option, but it's not for everyone.Of course, life didn’t go as smoothly as I had envisioned as an 18-year-old. Fortunately, I had a six-month grace period before I had to start repaying my loans after graduating and I was confident something would turn up.This became glaringly apparent 10 years later, when I received an email from the HR department at my company: We are commanded to immediately remit 15% of your disposable pay to the U. But six months later, the only career-related job I’d found was an unpaid internship at a small literary agency.Your new consolidation loan may have a longer repayment period than remained on your individual loan(s).Consolidation presents unique disadvantages for Perkins loan borrowers because it replaces the longer grace periods and cancellation benefits of Perkins loans with the standard federal loan terms.