Student Loans Get More Expensive IF YOU HAVEN'T yet consolidated your student loans, you'd better get cracking. Rates are on the rise.
The government will reset interest rates for federal Stafford and PLUS loans this summer, and it's expected to bump them up by as much as 1.5 to two percentage points, according to industry experts. This would be the first rate increase in five years — and probably not the last. Interest rates for Stafford and PLUS loans are reset each July 1, based on the 91-day T-Bill rate determined at its last auction in May. Last year, the T-bill hit a rock-bottom 1.07%. Stafford loans for students in repayment were at 3.37%. After a series of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes since then, however, the T-bill is expected to approach 3% in May. At its latest auction in March, it traded at 2.84%. The Stafford loan rate, were it to be set today, would be 5.14%.
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