Name: Is Now a Good Time to Refinance Your Student Loans?
Uploaded: 2023-10-05T20:45:00Z
Duration: 5 min 49 s
Description: Student-loan borrowers resuming payments this month might consider refinancing their loan to rein in costs. Wall Street Journal reporter Gabriel T. Rubin joins host J.R. Whalen to explain why financial experts suggest borrowers should think twice before refinancing. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press

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Student-loan borrowers resuming payments this month might consider refinancing their loan to rein in costs. Wall Street Journal reporter Gabriel T. Rubin joins host J.R. Whalen to explain why financial experts suggest borrowers should think twice before refinancing. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press

https://m.wsj.net/video/20231005/da121750-1f2c-4779-b70f-677d35134676/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

 Is Now a Good Time to Refinance Your Student Loans?

J.R.: Here's your money briefing for Thursday, October 5th. I'm J.R. Whalen for the "Wall Street Journal." Student loan borrowers, who've resumed making payments, might be considering refinancing, but it doesn't make financial sense. "Wall Street Journal" economics reporter, Gabe Rubin joins me. So Gabe, what does refinancing allow student loan borrowers to do?

Gabe: So, in a general sense, refinancing allows a student loan borrower or really any other type of borrower to do two possible things. You can either change the rate on your loan, hopefully to make it lower, or you can change the term of that loan, which means that if you would prefer to make smaller monthly payments over a longer period of time, you can choose to do that.

J.R.: So let's say somebody has a payment plan through a federal student loan program, and they decide to refinance, what happens to their loan?

Gabe: So you're effectively removing that loan or those loans from the federal system. So, what you have to do is consolidate all of your loans into a single loan, which then gets removed from the federal system. And what that does is it produces a blended interest rate. So that's basically a mathematical formula that combines the rates of your various loans that you might have, you might have multiple student loans, and it goes into one, and you get a single rate. And after that, you can choose to refinance it and get a lower rate or change the term. What that does though is it opens up a couple of risks, and those risks include that by being out of the federal system, you're no longer able to get that loan forgiven in a case of mass debt forgiveness. And also, it's not eligible for many of these debt repayment programs that the government offers, including the new save or Saving on a Valuable Education Plan that could really lower someone's monthly payments. There are a lot of risks involved in consolidating and refinancing.

J.R.: Oh, so there is a trade off here.

Gabe: Definitely a trade-off, and it doesn't make sense for lots of borrowers.

J.R.: So why do financial experts say that now is not a good time for borrowers to consider refinancing?

Gabe: Yeah, so this doesn't apply completely across the board, there are exceptions, but for most borrowers, especially those with undergraduate loans, it really doesn't make sense right now for those people to refinance, because we're in a high interest rate environment. If you've been following what the Federal Reserve has been doing, they've been raising rates for over a year now to try to lower inflation, and what that means is that credit costs more throughout the economy. So the refinancing rates that are out there are not gonna be as attractive as they were say a year or two ago, which makes refinancing your federal loans a lot more of a gamble and a lot less of a benefit for most borrowers.

J.R.: But what if someone has an excellent credit score? Could that open up more attractive refinancing options for them?

Gabe: Yeah, it could. So the better your credit is, the lower rates you could qualify for if you're trying to refinance. And there are lots of financial institutions out there that have pretty attractive or relatively attractive introductory rates to get you into their business, but that really only applies if you have very good credit and if your income is high enough that you wouldn't really qualify for one of these debt payment programs that the government offers or if your loans are not eligible for that or if they have a very high interest rate.

J.R.: Now, what about people with graduate loans or parent PLUS loans? What's the refinancing picture like for them in the current environment

Gabe: Folks that have these types of loans would be theoretically, at least, the target audience for refinancing right now, even though it doesn't make sense for most undergraduate borrowers. So, people with parent PLUS loans do not qualify for many of the government forgiveness programs. And both graduate and parent PLUS loans tend to have that higher interest rate, which could make refinancing more attractive to them if they can get that lower rates. Also, for many graduate loans or professional loans, these are people who are in pretty high income professions. Think people who have gone to law school or medical school, and people in those professions might have an incentive to refinance, because they see higher incomes down the road for them, and they wouldn't really benefit from a government forgiveness program that's based on income. And also, maybe they just wanna lower their monthly payments right now, because they expect to have very high incomes in the future when paying off loans would be quite easy.

J.R.: Refinancing was popular among mortgage borrowers during the pandemic when rates were near record lows. Could student loan borrowers have refinanced then?

Gabe: Yeah, they could have, but it didn't necessarily make sense for them then either, even though rates were significantly lower, of course, during the depths of the pandemic when the Fed was more concerned with stimulating the economy than slowing it down. But at the same time, federal loans have been in this pause for three plus years, and as part of that pause, not only did people not have to make payments, interest rates were also set at zero. So at that point, you would've been refinancing your federal loans, which had a 0% interest rate into a private loan that was not paused at a higher interest rate, even if in a relative sense that interest rate would've been pretty low.

J.R.: That's "Wall Street Journal" reporter, Gabe Rubin, and that's it for "Your Money Briefing." Today's show is produced by Ariana Aspuru with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm J.R. Whalen for the "Wall Street Journal." We'll be back tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 