marauder307
08-15-2006, 12:27 PM
What I'm really looking for is a trustworthy financial service.
The situation is thus: I took on a student loan while I was a graduate student at ERAU. It was through Bank of America; they, in turn, sold it off to a third-party servicer, ACS.
I graduated December 2001; ended up having to defer the start of payments due to Coast Guard commitments elsewhere (I've mentioned these in other postings). Started repayments in June 2003. (NOTE: it complicates matters that this is a private loan, not a federal one; Stafford, unfortunately, couldn't cover all the expenses necessary to get through ERAU.)
Since then, I've been activated once more with the Guard; at the time, due to uncertainties about how much my Guard pay would cover (vs. my DoD pay), I asked ACS to put me on their graduated payment program---starts off with very small payments, ends up with very big ones. Payments just go to interest in the beginning and end up covering interest + principal at the end...or so goes the explanation from ACS.
This worked great until ACS goofed it up---forgot to raise the payments at the scheduled time and to the correct amount, and the interest rate has doubled over the last three years (4.1% all the way to 8.37% now) so now, I'm losing ground to the tune of about $100/month, even with overpaying slightly ($20-30). At just over 50-thou owed, this is intolerable.
What I'm looking to do is refinance this thing out for 25 years at a FIXED interest rate, so I can actually start making some headway on this thing. This debt has started to become toxic to my credit rating and I need to get some damage control in, FAST. I don't actually plan on taking 25 years to pay it off---as some of my other smaller debts get paid off and closed, I'm going to divert the monies into repayment on this one. But with that time span involved, the payments will be small enough to deal with in the short term.
Can anybody here point me in the right direction?
The situation is thus: I took on a student loan while I was a graduate student at ERAU. It was through Bank of America; they, in turn, sold it off to a third-party servicer, ACS.
I graduated December 2001; ended up having to defer the start of payments due to Coast Guard commitments elsewhere (I've mentioned these in other postings). Started repayments in June 2003. (NOTE: it complicates matters that this is a private loan, not a federal one; Stafford, unfortunately, couldn't cover all the expenses necessary to get through ERAU.)
Since then, I've been activated once more with the Guard; at the time, due to uncertainties about how much my Guard pay would cover (vs. my DoD pay), I asked ACS to put me on their graduated payment program---starts off with very small payments, ends up with very big ones. Payments just go to interest in the beginning and end up covering interest + principal at the end...or so goes the explanation from ACS.
This worked great until ACS goofed it up---forgot to raise the payments at the scheduled time and to the correct amount, and the interest rate has doubled over the last three years (4.1% all the way to 8.37% now) so now, I'm losing ground to the tune of about $100/month, even with overpaying slightly ($20-30). At just over 50-thou owed, this is intolerable.
What I'm looking to do is refinance this thing out for 25 years at a FIXED interest rate, so I can actually start making some headway on this thing. This debt has started to become toxic to my credit rating and I need to get some damage control in, FAST. I don't actually plan on taking 25 years to pay it off---as some of my other smaller debts get paid off and closed, I'm going to divert the monies into repayment on this one. But with that time span involved, the payments will be small enough to deal with in the short term.
Can anybody here point me in the right direction?