alpar80

Have any of you financed your flight training with Key Bank?? I am beginning to pay this monster off and am wondering if there are any consolidation services that will eat this one? Im in deep and need to consolidate.

flyerfly

I too have a Key Alternative Loan. I would suggest the book Total Money Make Over by Dave Ramsey. This book taught me to suck it up and pay the bad boy off. First off you don't want to resort to debt consolidation right now when if you cut say beer, eating out, new clothes, movies out of the budget and put it towards paying off the debt you can probably make it.

Debt consolidation really hurts your credit. Not saying its a bad thing to do but give starving a try first. I used to sit at the end of the month and wonder where all my money went. Now I sit at the begining of the month and tell my money where to go. I have 3 credit card payments, car insurance, $640 key payment, $450 rent, and a $123 cell phone bill. By sacrificing a lot and budgeting very tightly I am able to make it through first year pay. I was a TSA and now am in training at AWAC.

Get that book its amazing and a good read! Good luck!

ExperimentalAB

How'd you get off with just $640?? Including Federal, I'm just a hair over $1K a month!! Arghh...

P.S. You can consolidate your loans with another Lender w/o hurting your credit - Basically turn all your payments into one if you have several lenders...they'll probably cut your interest too. The majority of my debt is SLM, but Key will cut my interest by half come this summer when I consolidate.

JetJock16

I don't think he's talking about the same thing. Debt consolidation doesn't hurt your credit unless you seek debt relief. If you hire a company to lower your interest rates and force your creditors into your terms then yes your credit will take a hit, as it should. But if you consolidate by finding a creditor that will pay off your loan and intern give you a lower interest rate then that doesn't hurt your credit. Yes you do take the 2 point hit when the run your credit score but it will rebound in less than 2 months. This is common practice!!!!

Take a look around, it shouldn't be hard to find a creditor that will give you a better rate seeing banks what business. Key Banks as well as everyone else's rates are variable, when the new rates come out in about a month your interest rate will change again and then again down the road. Sometimes up and sometimes down. Fixed rates are for Federal loans and Key Bank loans are not Federal. My advice, don't let the payment kill you. You are allowed deferments and forbearance based upon your current situation. This allows you to hold off paying until you can afford to. Yes the interest continues to build with out any principle being chipped away but at least you can survive until 2nd year pay. Also talking to them about reduced payments. Usually creditors are inclined to allow reduced payments for a time period, make the payments interest only until you can afford more then add what you can. To them some money is better than no money!!!!

But, don't lesson to me. Call Key and explain your situation, make sure you're truthful and if you have to speak to a supervisor then do so, they can do a lot more for you than the under paid drones that work the call center phones. BTW, I have a degree in Finance but I'm no expert. Take it for what it's worth. Debt consolidation with out debt relief will not hurt your credit score. People do it all the time with student loans, including yours truly.

alpar80

The rate I am paying is @ 8.25$ Vari. This amounts to close to $1000./mo which means that my whole paycheck is going to Key. On top of this I pay for my Daughter, Credit Cards (lived off of them in College), food, room rate for my base, insurance, and the list goes on... I am in forebarance and the interest rate keeps hiking up! I haven't really looked much because most of the consolidation programs are tailored to federal loans. My main question is; does anyone know of a credible bank that would buy this loan in excess of 100k? Many of the banks I have seen wont touch it. Are there any recommendations?

172capt

Try sallie mae just make sure you know what rate they are giving you they tried to screw me over by telling me i was locked in at 5% but when I got the final letter before payoff it was up to 9% which was higher than the original loan was and made consolidating pointless. I was able to call them and cancel it though. I don't know why any bank would not touch it because student loans are guaranteed even if you declare bankruptcy, they can even garnish wages.

BoilerUP

Holy massive debt for a 25k career, Batman!!!

You need to call Key yesterday and talk to someone that can help you adjust your repayment schedule. You also need to start talking to other lending institutions (Bank of America, Sallie Mae, Capital One, etc) about refinancing or other options! If you really have over $100k in student loan debt you need MAJOR assistance...

Every time I read a post like this, I just have to say....Thank you God for the blessings I have, thank you Uncle Sam for the $$$ that helped pay for college, and thank you mom and dad for not only helping out with tuition but for giving me the work ethic to have three jobs while 18 hours of credit in college. It sure was a PITA but no debt whatsoever besides student loans and the wife's car is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Thank you ARW ALPA for negotiating a 3% B fund into the 401k along with a nice match and thank you T Rowe Price for having good fund managers to keep that 401k and my Roth growing nicely.

DMEarc

If we were all so lucky to have mom and dad help...

KiloDelta

I will be in the same situation here in about 6 months. Around 100k in federal and private student loans. I have one loan with Key, and the rest is from Sallie Mae. I plan on consolidating and deferring for as long as I need to. Its rough to have such high student loans and such crappy pay starting out, but I knew going into college that it would be like this.

At least there isn't a hiring shortage!! I heard horror stories when I first started college of people graduating with all of their ratings and their degree, and not finding a job and having to work at Best Buy just to make student loan payments.

BoilerUP

I know I was fortunate to have had help from my folks...even acknowledged it in the post you quoted. That said, what they provided was far from a blank check.

I'm sure you want to provide as much as possible for your children's college education....right?