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Understanding, Managing, and Repaying Student Loans for Dentists
Posted by Chance on June 23, 2023In 2019, I published an email campaign and course to help prospective dental students, current dental students, and new dentists understand their student loans. The course and emails were well received, but a year later, the COVID-19 Pandemic and emergency forbearance changed the game.
In 2023, I decided to mark the course as sold-out and discontinued the email campaign because I did not have the desire to update the content to reflect current and future changes in the Department of Education’s policies.
As I write this post in the summer of 2023, I am going to publish all of the course content, including videos, and the 20 email campaign within this forum where we can leave the discussion open to pre-dental students. Here, the community can provide updates and add context or request modifications to the content. My hope is that by posting the content within the forums on Embrasure Space where students can help guide each other regarding today’s best practices and programs to help them manage their student debt. I will not be available to answer questions about student loans or income-driven repayment plans as my focus and attention are needed elsewhere.
Please note that almost all of the forums on our site are set to private and are only visible when a user is signed into the platform. This thread is the first forum thread I have added to this platform and I have elected to make this thread publically accessible.
Regards,
Chance Bodini, DDS
I am a general dentist and founder of Proximal Contact, LLC where we operate:
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Course Details are Below: Please note that this course is no longer eligible for CE credit.
Description
CE Details: The format of this lecture is a recorded video webinar divided into multiple lessons. This electronically delivered self-instructional program is designated for 3 hours of CE credit by Embrasure Space. AGD Subject Code: 550.
Synopsis:
Student loans are a challenge for many current dental students and young dentists. This course is applicable to current students, recent graduates, and practitioners who have not refinanced their federal student loans. As a general dentist who graduated in 2015, I am currently repaying my student loans under PAYE and have dedicated a significant amount of time to understand my own situation. Prior to graduating from dental school, I had researched the available income-driven repayment plans, but there was little information tailored to young dentists. This course is designed to fill that void and review strategies with young dentists to manage their student loans.
Educational Objectives:
- Describe available student loan types.
- Describe the differences be unsubsidized and subsidized loans.
- Understand how interest rates are calculated for direct loans.
- Define origination fees for graduate students.
- Define income-driven repayment.
- Describe current and historical income-driven repayment plans – including ICR, IBR, PAYE, and REPAYE.
- Describe how payments are calculated under IBR, PAYE, and REPAYE.
- Discuss the similarities and differences between PAYE and REPAYE.
- Understand how student loan interest accrues and what events trigger capitalization of outstanding interest.
- Understand negative amortization and how it affects your student loan balance.
- Introduce borrowers to current loan repayment programs including NHSC and IHS LRP.
- Describe Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and define eligibility requirements.
- Discuss the pros and cons of consolidation.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Chance Bodini is a general dentist practicing in San Diego, California. Chance graduated from the University of Maryland in 2015 and moved to Southern California to begin his career. Chance currently works as a dentist full-time in an FQHC and is the founder of Embrasure Space, Practice Rail, and Proximal Contact, LLC.
Disclosures: The speaker is the founder of Proximal Contact, LLC (the parent company of Embrasure Space). This speaker nor any member of his family have a financial arrangement or affiliation with a corporate organization offering financial support for this continuing dental education program. The speaker has no financial arrangement with any product or service mentioned in this course.
Release Date: 6-7-2019
Last Reviewed: 1-15-2022
Expiration: 1-15-2024
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Course Overview
This course is designed to review strategies with young dentists to manage their student loans. This course is applicable to current students, recent graduates, and practitioners who have not refinanced their federal student loans.
Student loans change periodically. As such, this course will change over time. This course was last edited on May 11th 2019.
Why did I create this course? I am a general dentist and have my own student loan obligation. There are several websites dedicated to the helping physicians understand their student loans in the context of their residencies, public service loan forgiveness, and expected incomes; but there are few (if any) dedicated to general dentists and specialists. Dentists are in a unique position in comparison to our colleagues who attended medical school because most of us do not have access to a job that qualifies for public service loan forgives and the majority of dentists are still solo-practitioners who own their own businesses.
This course will consist of several lessons.
- Glossary of Terms
- The basics about student loan debt
- Student Loan Times
- Subsidized vs. Unsubsidized
- Interest Rates for Direct Loans
- How are Payments Calculated?
- Accrue vs. Compound: How Interest Affects Your Loan Balance
- Negative Amortization and Breaking Even
- Events that Trigger Capitalization
- Annual Recertification
- Calculating the Cost of Dental School
- PAYE and REPAYE
- Consolidation
- Loan Repayment Programs
- Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)
- Private Refinancing
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Updates
- References and Resources
It’s important to understand that I am a general dentist. I am not a CPA, CFP, attorney, real estate agent, or broker. It is not my responsibility to ensure your financial well-being or career development. However, I hope you find what I share helpful and I appreciate feedback.
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Glossary of Terms
You need to be an active participant in your financial health. In order to participate competently in your own personal finances, you need to be able to communicate effectively with those who advise you. In order to do that, we need to speak the same language. This lesson defines some terms that you must understand before you can develop a plan to manage your student loans and proceed through this course.
The list of terms is available below and there’s a document you can download to your computer attached as a PDF.
List of Terms:
Gross Income: Gross income refers to an individual’s gross annual pay before taxes and any deductions. Gross income includes all sources of income such as employment income, tips, dividends or interest received, alimony, pension, capital gains or rental income.
Adjusted Gross Income (AGI): Adjusted gross income is a modification of gross income and is equal to an individual’s gross income minus any “adjustments” or deductions. Adjusted gross income is the starting point for calculations made on an individual’s tax bill.
Standard Deduction: The standard deduction is the dollar amount that a taxpayer may subtract from their income before income tax is applied if the taxpayer chooses to not itemize her deductions.
Single: Single is the basic filing status for unmarried people who do not qualify to file as head of household.
Joint Return: A joint return is a tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by two married taxpayers whose filing status is “married filing jointly”, or by a widowed taxpayer whose filing status is qualifying widow or widower.
Married Filing Separately: Married couples filing a joint return (define above) file one tax return together and share the responsibility for the data reported and taxes owed. Married couples also have the option to record their respective incomes, exemptions, and deductions on separate tax returns by electing to file separately.
Loan (noun): A loan is something that is borrowed. During our discussion about student loans, we are referring to a sum of money borrowed.
Principal: The original sum of money borrowed.
Interest Rate: The interest rate is the amount charged by a lender to a borrower for the use of the assets. Typically, interest is expressed as a percentage of the principal and noted on an annual basis as the annual percentage rate (APR).
Outstanding Interest: If payment or payments made do not cover the amount of interest that has accrued, the unpaid interest is “outstanding”.
Capitalization: When referring to loans, capitalization is the process of adding unpaid interest to the principal balance. After interest has been capitalized, interest will accrue on the new unpaid principal.
Compound Interest: Capitalization drives compound interest. As interest accrues on a loan, it can be capitalized. Once capitalized, interest now accrues on the new principal balance. When outstanding interest is not paid and is being capitalized, the interest is compounding.
New Borrower: A new borrower refers to an individual who has no outstanding balance in either a Direct or Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL) when she receives a direct or FFEL loan on a specific date.
Cosigner: A cosigner serves as an additional repayment source for the primary borrower and is often used to help a borrower obtain more favorable terms while applying for a loan.
Direct Loan Program: The William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program is more often called the Direct Loan Program. Included within the direct loan program are direct subsidized loans, direct unsubsidized loans, direct PLUS loans, and direct consolidation loans.
Stafford Loans: Direct subsidized and direct unsubsidized loans are sometimes referred to as Stafford Loans.
FFEL: Refers to the Federal Family Education Loan Program. No new loans have been issued through this program since July 1st 2010.
Parent PLUS: Refers to a Direct PLUS loan or a Federal Plus loan made to a parent of a borrower to help pay for a dependent’s undergraduate education.
Student PLUS: A Student PLUS loan is also called a Graduate PLUS or Grad PLUS loan. These loans are issued to graduate or professional students when they have exhausted alternative government loan programs.
Grad PLUS: See “Student Plus” above.
Loan Servicer: A loan servicer is an organization that collects your loan payments and completes other transactions related to your federal student loans. The loan servicer does not necessarily own your loan, the “loan holder” owns the loan(s).
Loan Holder: The organization that owns your loans.
Subsidized Loans: Subsidized loans do not accrue interest while the borrower is enrolled in school at least half-time or during deferment.
Unsubsidized Loans: Unsubsidized loans begin accruing interest as soon as the loan is dispersed.
Grace Period: A grace period is the period of time between graduation and the start of repayment.
Repayment: The action of paying back a loan.
Deferment: The deferment period is a time during which a borrower does not have to pay interest or repay the principal of a loan.
Forbearance: A period during which your monthly loan payment is temporarily suspended or reduced. During forbearance, interest continues to accrue.
Delinquent: A loan becomes delinquent when payments are not received by their due dates.
Default: A loan will enter default if the borrower fails to repay a loan according to the terms agreed to in the promissory note. For most federal student loans, you will default if you have not made a payment in more than 270 days.
Consolidate: A process of combining multiple loans into a single loan.
Refinance: To replace an existing loan with a new loan, presumably with more favorable terms.
Income Driven Repayment (IDR): Income driven repayment plans are available to borrowers whose student loan payments are high compared to their income. There are multiple IDR plans available and all of them set the borrower’s monthly student loan payment at an amount that is calculated as a percentage of income and family size.
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The Basics About Student Loan Debt
This post contains a video.
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Student Loan Types
There are several types of student loans available for graduate students. However, the 2 loans that are typically used to fund the bulk of your dental education are Direct Federal Loans which include Direct Federal Unsubsidized Loans, and Direct Federal Student PLUS (Grad PLUS) loans.
Available Loan Types:
- Direct Federal Unsubsidized Loans (AKA Stafford Loans)
- Direct Federal Student PLUS Loans
- Direct Federal Parent PLUS Loans – loans obtained by a parent of a student to finance a child’s education.
- Health Professions Student Loan (HPSL) – awarded to students by their schools.
- Loans for Disadvantaged Students (LDS) – comparable to HPSL loans, but reserved for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
- Institutional
Loans – loans provided by an academic institution. I also group HPSL
loans here because HPSL loans are awarded to students by their institutions. - Private Loans – loans issued by a private entity.
It should be noted that direct loans are the only loans eligible for income-driven repayment plans so HPSL, LDS, institutional, and other private loans will require separate monthly payments after graduation.
If your parents obtained a Parent PLUS Loan, your parents are responsible for the monthly payments and their income would be used to calculate the payments due under an income drive repayment plan. In general, Parent PLUS Loans should be avoided.
The video below briefly reviews the types of student loans available to students. Remember, the two main types of loans are Direct Stafford Loans and Student PLUS loans (Grad PLUS).
Graduate student loans issued through the Federal Direct Loan Program are unsubsidized. A subsidized loan does not accrue interest while the borrower is a full-time student. An unsubsidized loan does accrue interest while the borrower is a student. Therefore, the loans obtained to finance your dental education accrue interest while you are a dental student.
Origination fees are costs incurred by the borrower to create the loan usually expressed as a percentage of the monies borrowed.
- A health professions loan has no origination fee.
- A direct Stafford loan has an origination fee of 1.062%
- A direct Graduate PLUS loan has an origination fee of 4.248%
- A direct Parent PLUS loan has an origination fee of 4.248%
Stafford loans max out at $40,500 per year with a lifetime max of $224,000 (including undergraduate loans). Since most dental students need to borrow more than $40,500 per year to finance their education, they will need to obtain the more expensive Grad PLUS loans.
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Source: “Types of Loans.” American Dental Education Association, 2018, www.adea.org/GoDental/Money_Matters/Types_of_loans.aspx.
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Subsidized vs. Unsubsidized
Prior to 2012, subsidized loans were available to Graduate Students. While undergraduate students still have access to subsidized loans, graduate students are no longer afforded this luxury.
Subsidized loans do not accrue interest while the borrower is in school or in deferment.
Additionally, if the borrower’s monthly payment as calculated under IDR does not cover the interest that accrues each month on a subsidized loan, the federal government will cover the difference during the first 3 years of payment under any of the income-driven repayment plans.
Unsubsidized loans do accrue interest while the borrower is in school or in deferment. Since graduate students are not eligible for subsidized loans, unsubsidized loans make up the majority of a dental student’s debt, and interest begins accruing on each loan the day it is dispersed.
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Interest Rates for Direct Loans
How are interest rates calculated for Direct Loans?
Interest rates for loans issued through the Federal Direct Loan Program are set by federal law and are fixed for the life of the loan. The rates of new loans offered by the Federal Government change each year as the rate is tied to the market rate of the 10-year Treasury note as outlined below.
Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loan for graduate students = 10-year Treasury note + 3.60%, capped at 9.50%.
Federal Direct Grad PLUS Loan = 10-year Treasury note + 4.60%, capped at 10.50%.
Note that the Grad PLUS Loan is exactly 1% higher than the Federal Direct unsubsidized loan as PLUS loan rates are “Graduate rates” + 1%.
For reference, undergraduate students have access to lower interest rates where Federal Direct Subsidized Loans for undergraduate students = 10-year Treasury note + 2.05%, capped at 8.25%
Note: In the video above, I did not include the origination fee in the example explaining how much $1.00 costs. What you should understand is that when you borrow $1.00, you’re actually borrowing $1.00 + the origination fee. The origination fee is added to the principal balance and the interest is then calculated on the sum of the $1.00 + origination fee.
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How are payments calculated?
Discretionary income is the value used to calculate a borrower’s required payment under any of the income-driven repayment plans.
From your 2018 tax returns, your adjusted gross income can be found on line 7 of Form 1040. Or line 35 if you filed Form 1040NR.
From the prior year’s tax returns, you can find your AGI on:
- Line 4 if you filed a Form 1040EZ.
- Line 21 if you filed a Form 1040A.
- Line 37 if you filed a Form 1040.
Federal Poverty Level = FPL.
The FPL is dependent on family size and state of residence (lower 48 or Hawaii or Alaska).
Discretionary income = Adjusted gross income – (150% FPL).
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Note that the tax lines mentioned above are from 2019 tax returns, the line numbers may have changed since 2019.
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Accrue vs. Compound: How outstanding interest affects your loan balance
Interest accrues on the principal balance of the loan. Interest does not accrue on outstanding interest while enrolled as a full-time student or during repayment if the borrower is enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan. However, there are events that trigger the outstanding interest to be capitalized to your direct loans.
Capitalization is the addition of unpaid interest to the principal balance of the loan. After capitalization, interest will begin accruing on the new (and higher) principal balance.
In the private sector, interest is capitalized daily or monthly depending on your loan agreement. As stated above, when interest is capitalized, interest begins accruing on the new (and often higher) principal balance – a process referred to as compounding. With this in mind, it is extremely important to realize that borrowers utilizing IDR are experiencing simple interest and are not subjected to compounding interest and therefore the rule of 72 does not apply.
The Rule of 72:
The Rule of 72 is a simple way to estimate how long a particular investment or debt will take to double given a fixed annual rate of return. Some students try to apply this rule to their student loans, but it is not applicable because direct loan interest does not compound.
For example, if an investment were to have an annual rate of return of 7%, where the returns were re-invested, it would double in approximately 10 years (72 divided by 7). We typically use this calculation when discussing index funds or other equities.
Since the interest that accumulates on student loans in the direct loan program is simple interest it would take about 14 years for a loan with an interest rate of 7% to double in size.
Example: a $100,000 loan with 7% interest accumulates $7,000 in interest each year. If the borrower’s monthly payment were calculated to be $0 under one of the income-driven repayment plans, the principal balance at the end of 1 year would be $100,000 with an outstanding interest of $7,000 for a total balance of $107,000. However, since the outstanding interest is not capitalized, the borrower will continue to accumulate interest on the original balance of $100,000 during her second year of payments under IDR, instead of the new balance of $107,000. Therefore, only $7,000 will be added to the loan each year assuming $0 monthly payments under IDR. $100,000 divided by $7,000 = 14.3 years.
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Negative Amortization and Breaking Even
Amortization of loans refers to the spreading of payments over a defined period of time often referred to as the amortization schedule. Upon graduation, dental students enter a standard repayment plan where their graduate student loans are amortized over a 10-year term. Since most graduates have no income on the day they graduate, it is not practical (and in most cases, not possible) to begin making payments that cover their obligation.
With this in mind, the majority of new dentists enter into one of the available income-driven repayment plans we already mentioned.
Negative amortization is an increase in the balance of a loan caused by a failure to make payments that cover the interest due. Unfortunately, many dental students will find themselves in a position where their payments in an IDR plan do not cover the interest that accrues on the loans each month. Fortunately, while enrolled in PAYE, REPAYE, or IBR, interest is not capitalized (and therefore does not compound).
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Events that Trigger Capitalization:
If you are experiencing negative amortization while in an income-driven repayment plan, you should be aware of what causes capitalization.
Capitalization is an event where outstanding interest is added to the principal balance of your student loans.
Below are 8 events that trigger capitalization:
- Default. If you fail to make payments and enter default outstanding interest is capitalized.
- The end of a forbearance period.
- The end of a deferment period.
- The end of a grace period.
- Failure to re-certify your income qualifications for an IDR plan.
- Loss of the “partial financial hardship” that qualified you for an IDR plan.
- Consolidation.
- Changing from one repayment plan to another.
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Annual Recertification
This lesson is simple. While enrolled in any income-driven repayment plan, borrowers are required to certify their income annually. Failure to provide proof of your income results in the capitalization of outstanding interest (if applicable) and resetting your monthly payment equal to the monthly payment on the standard ten-year repayment plan.
There are 2 ways to provide proof of income.
- Tax returns
- Paystubs
Unless you experience a significant decrease in income, it is better to use your tax returns because you can use tax-sheltered accounts and other legal methods to reduce your adjusted gross income. Another advantage to using your tax returns to prove your income is that you are using last year’s earnings to calculate this year’s payments. Most of us experience an increase in AGI each year as we gain more patients and increase in efficiency so your payments may actually be less than 10% of your discretionary income.
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Calculating the Cost of Dental School
In the video below, we will walk through
how to calculate how much the first year of dental school will cost a
student. In the example, we run through the numbers for one of the
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PAYE and REPAYE
The two repayment plans that recent graduates and current students are choosing between are PAYE and REPAYE. Both programs calculate the annual payment to be 10% of the borrower’s discretional income and conclude with taxable forgiveness. However, there are some differences that need to be noted.
PAYE:
- Payment is calculated to be 10% of discretionary income
- Forgiveness after 20 years of on-time payments
- Capitalization is capped at 10% of the original balance
- Limited
to direct loan borrowers who did not have any direct loans prior to
October 1st, 2007, and obtained a new loan after October 1st, 2011. - Borrowers must have a partial financial hardship. What does this mean? Put
simply, you have a partial financial hardship if 10% of your monthly
income does not equal or exceed the monthly payment on the standard 10-year repayment plan. - Payments are capped at 10-year standard repayment regardless of the borrower’s income.
- Married borrowers can file taxes separately to reduce payments (you need to discuss this strategy with your CPA).
- No interest subsidy on unsubsidized loans. For subsidized loans, there is a 3-year subsidy in all income-driven repayment plans.
REPAYE
- Payment is calculated to be 10% of discretionary income
- Forgiveness after 25 years of on-time payments
- Capitalization is not capped.
- Anyone with direct loans qualifies.
- Borrowers do not need to have partial financial hardship.
- 50% interest subsidy on unsubsidized loans in perpetuity.
- 100%
interest subsidy on subsidized loans for 3 years (like all IDR plans);
50% interest subsidy on subside loans after 3 years in perpetuity. - What
does the 50% interest subsidy look like? Assuming all loans are
unsubsidized if a borrower’s loans accumulate $1000 in interest per
month and the borrower’s monthly payment is calculated to be $500 per
month under REPAYE. $500 in interest will be outstanding each month. If
enrolled in REPAYE, the government will pay half of the outstanding
interest which is equal to $250 per month in this example.
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Consolidation:
Consolidation is the process of combining multiple loans into a new, single loan. If you are consolidating direct loans, or combining non-direct loans with direct loans, the process is referred to as “direct loan consolidation”. Consolidating non-direct loans into a direct consolidated loan will make the loan eligible for repayment under one of the IDR plans.
Most dental students have multiple loans per academic year due to the high cost of their education; however, a case can be made that dentists with high debt should not consolidate their loans into 1 loan despite the convenience of having 1 loan servicer with 1 monthly payment. The reason that dentists may want to avoid consolidating their student loans is that while enrolled in an IDR plan, you may experience negative amortization (remember that negative amortization occurs when a borrower’s monthly payment does not cover the amount of interest that accrues on the principal balance).
One of the downsides to the IDR programs is that payments made in excess of the amount due cannot be applied to the principal balance until all outstanding interest on the loan has been paid.
The amount of interest that accrues on the consolidated loan is much more than the amount of interest that accrues on each of the smaller loans prior to consolidation (even though the sum of the interest that accumulates is the same).
So if a borrower has used 10 loans at $25,000 each to pay for a dental education for a total of $250,000 at an interest rate of 6%. The borrower has 2 choices. One, consolidate the 10 loans into 1 loan at an average interest rate. Two, leave the loans unconsolidated with the possibility of having to manage multiple loan servicers (and therefore multiple payments).
I would urge all dentists to consider leaving the loans unconsolidated and here is why:
When the borrower above graduates and enters into IDR, it is highly likely that her monthly payment calculated in the context of IDR will not cover the amount of interest that accrues on $250,000. Therefore the borrower will be experiencing negative amortization and the outstanding interest will begin to accrue (remember, the interest does not compound because it is not capitalized. Memorize the 8 events that trigger capitalization from our previous email). If the borrower is comfortable making payments in excess of the percentage of her income that is due, the extra payments will always be applied to the outstanding interest before the principal balance.
Practically speaking, what this means, is that if the 10 loans for $25,000 each were left as individual loans (not consolidated), they would each accrue $125 per month in interest.
However, if the 10 loans were consolidated into 1 jumbo loan of $250,000, the amount of interest that accrues on the loan each month is $1,250.
Let’s imagine that a borrower is currently earning an income where her monthly payments as calculated by IDR are $1,000. This borrower can also afford to make payments in excess of her calculated IDR payment and wishes to put an extra $250 per month toward her loans. If the borrower consolidated her loans into a jumbo loan, her monthly payment of $1,250 would break even (no interest would accrue, but she would not reduce the principal balance and the same amount of interest would accrue next month). But if the borrower had declined to consolidate her loans, she could direct the extra $250 per month towards 1 of the smaller loans (you do not have to spread the extra payment overall 10). In this situation, she would make her $1,000 per month IDR payment that is spread out over all her loans, and then pick 1 loan to apply the extra $250 towards. Since each loan only accrues $125 per month, the outstanding interest of $125 would be extinguished and the remaining $125 would be applied to the principal. Therefore, the borrower would have reduced her principal balance, and the amount of interest that accrues on at least one of the 10 loans would be less next month. Rinse and repeat this process and the amount of interest accruing on your loans will decrease each month – making negative amortization less burdensome.
Unfortunately, consolidation is a one-time event that cannot be redone or undone. So borrowers who already chose to consolidate their loans are stuck.
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