Payday Loan Place Window Graphics As I wrote some time ago, for the foreseeable future I've decided to put doctoral study on hold in favor of other activities that ought to make more money in the meantime. And I've also realized that if and when I do go back to it, I'm more interested in a program that's all research and doesn't require coursework. Since coursework is the North American model, that would mean whatever program I may do in the future, it would be through a university in a different country.

Having realized that, it then occurred to me that if I wasn't going back to an American university, I wouldn't be amassing any more U.S. federal student loans. Well, now that's a big deal, because I'd been using those loans to get through first my Bachelor's degree, then my Master's, and then to fund a few abortive attempts at the Big D. I had tried to choose schools at least partly on price, and my loans haven't been unmanageable, but they are noticeable, and as an educator I don't make a whole lot of money, so the idea of finding a way to make the monthly payment lower, well, it seemed attractive.

And that's when I entered the exciting world of student loan consolidation . When I got home from work today I decided there was no time like the present to try and make my life a little easier and (at least in the short run) cheaper by wrapping all my previous loans into a single giant loan burrito, having one monthly payment, and extending my life of financial service to others roughly until the point where I'd be likely to die anyway.

It turns out that you can do all of this from the comfort of your living room. An online experience similar to that for getting through a normal student loan process applies here. You even use the same four digit PIN-for-life that you do for the student loans you already amassed. The main difference is that you have to know and enter into your application, each and every loan provider, loan type, current payoff amount, and interest rate for all the student loans you have whether you intend to add them to your consolidation or not. For someone with only a few this isn't so bad, but I expect there are people out there with a dozen loans or more, and I could see the process being pretty cumbersome. At the same time, being in a position to borrow five figures while hanging out in the living room is pretty amazing.

Anyway, I got through it, saved all the documents, signed it with my PIN, which is sort of the online student loan equivalent to signing it in blood, I suppose, and await their feedback. It ought to make a slightly positive difference in getting from paycheck to paycheck for me, which is always nice, even if I recognize that it's something of a continuation of the same sort of "pay later" philosophy that is getting us all in so much trouble these days. Still, keeping track of payments separately is a real drag, and even if nothing changed but that I would have considered it. Should you do the same? Shoot, I don't even know whether it was a great idea for me . But the option is out there. Like the man said, you pays your money, you takes your choice!