I have about $33,000 in student loan debt - about $17,000 in five Stafford loans held by Great Lakes at 6.5% interest, $10,000 in two consolidated Stafford loans held by Navient at 6.25% (no idea how I ended up with two consolidated loans), and $6,000 in one private loan held by Discover at 4%.
I want to take a big bite out of these and am planning to make a $11,000 or so payment on the Great Lakes loans, since they have the highest interest rate. But it occurred to me I should probably also try to refinance/consolidate some of these loans, and hopefully end up with a lower interest rate?
So my question is, is there any benefit to refinancing before making a large payment? Or vice versa, should I make the $11,000 payment, and then refinance? Seems to me it wouldn't matter either way, but I don't know if having more or less outstanding balance affects how much of a break I might get on interest.
Also I'd definitely want to apply the full $11,000 to the Great Lakes loans with the highest interest rate, right?
Submitted October 15, 2017 at 12:07AM by atmospheric_noise http://ift.tt/2ynr973
