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Home » Education Articles » July 1 2006 Extension On Student Loan Consolidation Coming To An End

July 1, 2006 Extension on Student Loan Consolidation Coming to an End

Have you ever received a piece of mail asking you immediately to call about your student loans? Or, have you ever filled out an online student loan consolidation form? If so, you still may be eligible to save thousands of dollars on your student loans and cut your monthly payments by 60 percent.

As of July 1, 2006, student loan borrowers who did not get a chance to consolidate their outstanding student loans felt the impact of the interest rate increase. Federal student loan interest rates on July 1, 2006 increased by 39 percent (a 1.84 percentage point increase), which drastically increased payments for borrowers who did not meet the consolidation deadline.

Incomplete Applications

The U.S. Department of Education allowed student loan borrowers to lock in the significantly lower pre-July 1, 2006 interest rates by submitting an application for consolidation before the deadline. However, due to the enormous demand this year for student loan consolidation, many student loan borrowers were unable to finish their consolidation application in time. This resulted in an increase in monthly payments and thousands of dollars in extra interest costs for student loan borrowers who missed the consolidation deadline. However, there is good news for those who did not fully complete their consolidation application in time.

Many student loan borrowers prior to July 1, 2006 responded to a piece of mail immediately directing them to call about their student loans ( http://www.nextstudent.com) and then partially completed an application. This past year there also were borrowers who submitted a partially completed online application before the deadline. Since these borrowers did not sign the application they suspected they were ineligible for the lower interest rates.

Act Now to Receive Lower Interest Rates

For example, federal student loan consolidation (http://www.nextstudent.com/consolidation_loans/consolidation_loans.asp) provider NextStudent has countless partially completed applications from incoming callers and online inquiries that were started before the July 1, 2006 deadline. These applications were completed yet lack a signature; therefore, those borrowers are eligible to receive the pre-July 1, 2006 interest rates. In order to receive a lower rate, borrowers must act now and call NextStudent to sign their application. The Department of Education's extension most likely will expire by December 2006, which does not give borrowers much time to act.

To check and see if you are eligible for the pre-July 1, 2006 interest rates and save thousands of dollars on your student loans, immediately contact NextStudent at 1-800-299-4639 or online at http://www.nextstudent.com.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Keeping Up With Online Business Reading

It can be a major source of frustration trying to keep up with all of the business-related information, newsletters, updates, offers and so on that land in your email box. And although there may be no perfect way to ensure that you can read everything you want to and need to in order to stay current, while at the same time preserving enough time to do the work you need to do to keep your business functioning., I have found a way that cuts down on the worst of the time wasters and streamlines the remaining reading. It's a three-step process that works for me, and may work for you.

1. Weed it out. Anytime I find that I am not getting full value for my time from a newsletter, ezine or other informational email source, even though I may be getting some good stuff, out it goes. Chances are that I am either getting or can get the same info through another, more ROI-positive source.

2. Save it for a specific time. I used to waste hours a day reading business-related newsletters and ezines. Now, I put aside one day to read it all. This day is set aside solely for reading informational business mail (not client mail) and for a few other business activities that need focused attention. I don't schedule other business on this day, unless it is unavoidable. This way, I can get caught up and handle all necessary responses without feeling like I'm neglecting my "real" work.

3. Scan, cram and scram. This is the biggie for saving time. Learn to read for overall content and not for word-by-word absorption. This isn't deathless prose, folks, so there's no need to suck it in like some unearthed lost work of Hemingway. Scan any headings or sub-titles, ignoring completely what you don't need to know, and then scan-read the content of what you do need quickly to get the gist of the message. Only spend time on intense focused reading if the concept/content is difficult (yet vital) or supremely interesting and important. If it's just interesting, but not important, you can always read it some other time when you have a few minutes free. Once you've gotten what you need, save only the emails that you absolutely need for reference in an email folder and delete all the rest.

A secondary aspect of this step is to copy, paste and save content that you know you will need eventually, but just not right now, instead of giving it a thorough read right this second. Such information includes things like a link/resource list for later reference or a great idea that you know you'll need next month when you begin that new marketing campaign - or just general interest stuff that doesn't need immediate attention but would be helpful, useful or just plain enjoyable to read at some point. Paste this copy into a Word document (don't forget to leave the attribution and copyright info in case you ever need to cite the work for any reason, or want to see more stuff by the same author) and put it into the appropriate folder on your hard drive. I have several folders in my business files for things such as marketing, client-related info, industry-related info, and so on. Every so often, on a slow day or when I have to wait around in the office for a client or some such reason, I go through them to read what's there and weed out what I no longer need.

Using this 3-step process, I find that I can whip through the average newsletter/ezine in about 5-10 minutes or less, depending on the amount of content and that content's importance/interest to me. Since I am able to keep my ezine load down to a manageable number and my list is constantly tweaked for the greatest value-to-time ratio, I get well-read in a reasonable period of time without feeling like I am eating up valuable work time that should have been spent doing other activities.