Both student and parents can consolidate

Whether you have multiple graduate student loans or multiple private graduate student loans, or both, you should strongly consider consolidating them upon graduating in order to simplify your life. Whether you're a student who has to pay back the loans or a parent who has to, you'll be glad you consolidated.

Consolidating eliminates multiple loan payments

When you consolidate your graduate loans you are reducing the amount of monthly payments you will have to make per month. If you have two federal loans and two private loans, this is four different monthly payments; each loan probably also has a different interest rate, balance and repayment terms. Keeping track of the particulars of each loan can get confusing and possibly lead to financial problems for you because repaying four different loans can get expensive.

You shouldn’t consolidate federal and private loans

Unfortunately, you can't consolidate both federal and private graduate loans together—well, you can, but you don't want to because to do so would mean turning your federal loans into private loans, which means you give up the low interest rate the federal government gives you for a much higher interest rate that a private institution will charge. Your best choice is to consolidate each loan type separately, leaving you with two different payments, which is still better than four.

Consolidation helps by lowering monthly payments

The benefits of graduate loan consolidation won't come in the form of lower interest rates (in actuality you will still pay about the same amount in interest); however, the benefit to be had will be in lower monthly payments. It's better to be financially comfortable now by paying a little more in the long run. Most graduates fresh out of college will attest to this fact.

It’s never too late to consolidate

If you're a recent college graduate, or even if you graduated five years ago, if you have multiple student loans then you should strongly consider consolidating them. It will mean an instant monthly savings, as well as a few less bills to worry about each month.