Dear Fed, October 9, 2008

Couldn’t you have done this a week ago?

We all know that the economy is crumbling in front of our eyes.  And after that bailout bill and all these other attempts to fix the economy, the Fed and other countries are trying the old interest rate reduction trick again.  You are probably sick of me talking about this every time it happens.  As you may have noticed, we’ve got ING savings interest rates down to 2.75%, and checking interest rates down to 1.5%.  They’ve gotten on that pretty quickly!

But really, my issue with it being this week instead of last week (if it had to happen at all) is that my variable student loan interest rates are readjusted every quarter.  So, October 1st was the first day of the fourth quarter…which means I’m stuck with the same rate for my loans, but lower rates for my savings.  Yes, I complain about these things every time.  And I know that there are a lot of people worse off.  I’m just laying things out there.

That’s really all I’ve got for now.  I’ve been trying to follow a lot of what’s been going on in the financial world, but to be honest, it’s a bit depressing.  Though it’s odd when you think about how so many people are now finally thinking about living within their means and avoiding going into further debt.  Hooray living within your means!

My student loan rates dropped again! July 5, 2008

I mentioned before that my student loan rates had dropped a few times.  Well, it’s happened again!  I was actually looking forward to July 1st.  Yeah, I know, so lame.  But yep, my variable rate is down to 5%!  So that’s pretty excellent.  It went from 8.25% to 7.5% to 6%, and now to 5%.

Now something I’m not quite certain of is if I could consolidate my loans at this rate.  I’d assume that the Fed rates don’t have too much distance to go (it’s at 2% right now, so really, it can only drop down 2 points, right?), and so it would be pretty low.  I just don’t know for certain how to go about it.  I consolidated my Federal student loans after graduation, but I just left my private loans as they were.  Have any of you done this?  I guess I could just call the company that my loans are with and ask them how it works, but I think I’ll at least hold off until after this weekend.

Happy Fourth of July!

My student loan interest rate dropped! Hooray! January 9, 2008

I had read a post over at FiLife.com about why student loan interest rates aren’t dropping nearly as quickly or as often as the savings account interest rates are dropping. They said that many student loan companies have set their contracts to change variable rates at certain times and based on certain values and averages. For the company I’m borrowing from, they reset their interest rates every quarter. They’ve lowered my interest rate from 8.25% to 7.5%. I was worried that they had taken away my .25% rate reduction that they had given me for automatic deductions. I called them up and they said that they did. So, I guess that’s that.

So, check out your loans! Your rates might have been lowered!

(Yes, I know that since it’s based on variable rates that it could also go up. But for as long as I’ve been actively paying my loans (since I graduated) they’ve been at a stupidly high 8.25%. So things feel better now)

One thing to note is that if you are automatically having money deducted from your bank account, they might start taking less out…because with less interest charged, they wouldn’t get as much money from you, so by lowering your monthly payment, they’ll have you paying slower at the lower interest rate. So, keep that in mind if you’re trying to pay down your loans faster than they want you to (like I want to do).