Students should consolidate their student loans now to save money in the long run

• Borrowers who consolidate before then can probably lower their monthly payments in the short term and save thousands of dollars in interest payments over the long term.
• Some students who go to private colleges or attend graduate school enter the work world weighed down by a six-figure debt load.
• Lenders who market consolidation loans -- and there are hundreds of them -- make the process sound easy.
• Congress has proposed and is likely to pass a bill that allows consolidation loan rates to float with the market by 2006, just like regular variable-interest student loans, whose rates are pegged to the 91-day Treasury bill and are adjusted every July 1.
• Those rates have risen since last year's adjustment for all those variable-interest loans, to the point that if the upcoming change were based on last week's 91-day Treasury bill auction, the cost of most loans would increase 1.7 percentage points, according to loan experts at Sallie Mae, the country's largest purveyor of student loans.
• Come July, the current 2.77 percent rate that applies for borrowers still in school and during the six-month grace period afterward would hit 4.47 percent.
• The rate for out-of-school borrowers with loans taken after 1998 would move from 3.37 to 5.07 percent, while parents paying 4.17 percent on their PLUS loans would pay 5.87 percent after July 1.
• A consolidation loan pays off all the loans you want to include and creates one new loan, generally with a longer term that serves to lower the monthly payment.
• If you have loans through banks associated with the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP), you can consolidate with such lenders as Sallie Mae, Citibank, Collegiate Funding and a number of others.