KateSD Posted March 9, 2019 Share Posted March 9, 2019 Hi! My questions may sound naive but I've never taken a student loan before, thus extremely unexperienced on the matter. I'd really appreciate your input. My family has funds to help me cover 1 year of tuition. So, I'll need a loan for about $20K for the 1st year and then about $60K for the 2nd year. So, what do I do to save on interest? Do I apply and accept $20K now and then apply next year again and accept $60K then? Or do I apply only 1 time and accept the whole $80 now? Any ideas/tips for my situation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MT2PA Posted March 9, 2019 Share Posted March 9, 2019 Loans start earning interest the minute you receive them. Only take out what you need. No point in having 60k sitting around earning interest if you don't need it until the second year. Read up on student loans.gov and this forum. Anything you can think of has already been asked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aba51 Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 Idk how your student financial services works at your program, but I would ask them if they will disburse your student loans every semester or for every academic year. The moment the loans are disbursed, interests starts to accrue. To save on interest, your best bet would be to select an in-school repayment plan such as paying a fixed $25/month or paying the interest amount monthly. There are some calculators online where you can input your loans information and interest rate and then figure out what the monthly interest rate is. The third option is to defer payments (Ie. Don't pay anything during school) until after your grace period and then you'll start paying back everything. I haven't received my financial aid package yet but for my undergrad, my loans were disbursed every semester so I have a total of 8 loans to cover the four years. All in all, I'd take out loans per semester/year that you're in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MT2PA Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 Just to clarify - the government will ONLY disburse loans by semester - they will NOT give you money for the entire year. So OP CAN'T get 80k for the 2 years up front. I imagine private loans work similarly but have no personal experience with private bank loans. If you CAN pay interest while in school, great! But you'll quickly find your interest payments are insane and if you can afford to pay interest that high (thousands of dollars!) you're better off just taking out less in loans. The only way to really save on interest is to take out less in loans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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