Student Loans, what about them?

Red Phoenix Nation!!! Hello all my readers and fans of the blog! I'm chatting about a hot topic in the country today and that would be student loans! When it comes to student loan giants Sallie Mae, US Department of Education or in our part of the country Great Lake Higher Education it seems people run into problems. I like to caution people when they have multiple loans and think they have them consolidated. Odds are you're making one or two payments into your lender even if you have multiple little loans because they are now "consolidated." If you pull your credit you may notice all of the loans report individually but it doesn't concern you, YET! You run into a tough time or just make a mistake and pay it late. What you don't realize is you didn't just go late on one loan. All of your loans that you have with your student loan lender will now be reported late. What that means is if you have 1 payment for 5 student loans, you just took a late payment on all 5 student loans. That has been my experience when working with clients and their student loans. You have to be very careful and very sure of exactly how your student loans work. Often times when you call into your lender they aren't even 100% positive of exactly how it works or reports. Reason being is they haven't been given the information that executives have put into practice. What happens next is they don't penalize you with a 30 day late payment, they hit you with a 90 day late payment which hurts your credit a lot more significantly that taking a 30 day late. Imagine thinking you have just taken a 30 day late on what you thought was one loan, turns into taking a 90 day late on 5 different accounts. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough that I have to chat about it. Point blank, I see it every day and often multiple times a day. How can the report a 90 day late when it was only a 30 day late? It's a practice called "client capturing" and they are not suppose to be able to do it. Student loan default rates are among the highest in the country. They can't take your degree away but they can prevent you from obtaining more credit by penalizing you as severely as possible. This is what gives me reason to believe why they don't consolidate loans on a credit report. How do you know, what can be done??? CHECK YOUR CREDIT REPORTS WITH ALL THREE CREDIT BUREAUS! Review your credit carefully! If you have a 90 day late with your student loan lender and its on multiple accounts, you need to call them. It is also a fun fact if you have 9-12 months of consecutive on time payments you can get the late payments removed. We do it all the time. There is a lot more I could go into about student loans, but my little blog may start to bore you. If you have specific questions or want to know more please feel free to contact me. I'm always around... john@redphoenixco.com