How to Deal With Outstanding Student Loans
Student loans can be a serious drain on your personal budget, particularly if they're high amounts and you're falling behind on payments. Dealing with outstanding student loan debt consists of working with your various student loan creditors to ensure timely payments and an account in general satisfactory standing to protect your credit rating.
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Instructions
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Contact your student loan creditor(s) to determine just how much you owe to ensure that the amount reflected on your statements and what you have in your own personal records is accurate. Another reason for requesting this information is if you haven't been receiving statements because you've moved or haven't been paying attention to those statements you've received because you weren't able to pay. Contacting your creditor is a starting point for dealing with outstanding loans.
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Request a forbearance or deferment, if you can get one. For students with outstanding loans who have fallen behind because of unemployment or additional financial hardship, your loan provider might be willing to work with you on a forbearance or deferment, which means you may either suspend your monthly payments for a set amount of time or lower the amount to make it more affordable to maintain.
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Work out a payment arrangement if you aren't eligible for any modifications for your loan. Although you may still have a negative mark against your credit for being behind on payments, at the very least, it shows that your balance is going down. Student loan providers often try to work with you on a payment arrangement that works for your budget, unless you are so far behind that a certain amount is required monthly to ensure the loan won't be outstanding for an extensive period of time.
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Consolidate your loans. If you have too many loans to keep up with and you're behind on all of them, consider consolidating them into one payment that ensures that the balances on each keep moving down without the need to maintain a number of different loan accounts. Your lenders can tell you if this is an option with your loan types.
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