Using Student Loans to Pay Other Student Loans?

hops_scout
Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:48:19 +0000

Is that allowed? Is it doable? Is it a good idea?

I have a bachelors degree in which I had to take out around $50k in loans. I’ve been paying on them for about 18 months and have made decent progress considering… Now I’m a graduate student and I was able to pay my first semester’s tuition out of my pocket. I work a full-time job and live at home so I thought I had budgeted to be able to pay for all of grad school out of pocket. This next semester it looks like I’m going to have to take out about $3k for school after all and so I’ve gone through FASFA and everything. I’m told I could take out Federal Loans in the amount of $10,500 for the fall semester and $10,500 for the spring semester.

My thought is to take out these Stafford loans and use some of that money to pay down some of my private loans with higher interest rates.

Thoughts?