Washington

I have a Key Bank Alternative Loan. It is an "education loan" but does not qualift for the consolidation by the govt with my other education loans. It was for flight training. The orginal amt. was 37,000 dollars. I also used a good portion of this for school. I also have about 13,000 dollars in FSA direct and PLUS education loans.

The Key Bank Loan interest rate is 8.75% !!! Sheesh! There are credit cards with lower interest rates than that!


I dont think I did my homework on this. My accured interest is already almost 3,000 dollars! Ouch!


I recently got Quicken and put all my financial information in there....now that I have a clear picture of where I sit I'm about to puke!

During school, I used credit cards to pay for tuition because the gov loans wouldnt pay for it all (they only have 3,000 dollars per school year, and tuition here is 4,500 plus books, per semester. (in state no less, thanks Ohio! ARgh). Anyway, because of that I have...

10,400 dollars in credit card debt. One of the credit cards has 4,500 balance and has an interest rate of 17.5 percent! Interest on that card is 80 bucks per month. The other cards are at 10.5%


What is the smartest course of action? I am doing all I can to work my butt off trying to pay this down, but its not enough. The interest is killing me.


Would it be smart to refinance? Maybe I can get a loan with a lower interest rate than the 8.75 key bank rate?

Including all student loan and credit cards, I am 55,000 dollars in debt and climbing.


What to do?

Okay, so ELoan says they have education reconsolidation loans for alternative education loans (like my Key Bank Loan).

Their rate is 5.12%. The monthly payment would be about 300 bucks.

Right now my Key Bank Rate is 8.75 and the payment is 520 dollars per month.

If I refinanced with the ELoan, I could lower total interest paid, and also use the extra cash every month (due to the lower monthly payment) to pay off that 17.5% rate credit card.

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