personal finance

Lenders promise big savings on your student loans. Read the fine print first


Lewis Goldman, the chief marketing officer at at LendKey, said they were working to take such old ads off the internet. “We don’t make claims any more about absolute savings,” Goldman said.

The CEO of Splash Financial, Steven Muszynski, said its advertised savings rate of $29,340 is “very sporadically used.”

“We also are clear wherever it is used that this savings example is not showing the average savings of customers but is rather a hypothetical example,” Muszynski said. (It assumes a borrower’s interest rate is nearly halved).

“All are pretty aggressive in their marketing,” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of SavingForCollege.com.

The key takeaway, he said, was that “you should be skeptical about the average savings figures.”

Before you refinance your student debt, use a loan calculator (Kantrowitz has one on his website) to compare the monthly payments and total bill of your current loan against a potentially new one.

“Keep in mind,” Kantrowitz added, “a longer repayment term leads to lower monthly payments, but also more interest paid over the life of the loan.”



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