Graduation day is over; degree in hand, the chilling reality of your student loan is looming large. You do not start repaying you loan until 6 months after graduation. When loan repayment begins, you have to pay at least $50 a month until your entire student loan and interest is paid off.

It makes sense to repay the loan amount early, so that you trim the interest, which will continue building on your loan. Financial planners recommend that you pay the minimum balance on your student loan and try to save as much as you can for retirement. In any given month, you can opt to pay off more than your monthly requirement without penalty.

There are mainly four options of repayment which you can choose from. If you land up with a good job once out of college, and can afford to make steep monthly payments, go with the standard payment schedule. Under this option, you can pay off your debt within 10 years with the best interest rate. Its the quickest way to pay off your loans. However, it requires high monthly payments.

Graduated payment is an option if you expect to make a modest but steadily increasing wage. The payment requirements will start off gentle, and will gradually increase every couple of years for the next 10 to 30 years.

If you're in a commission-based or seasonal business, your income will vary accordingly. In this case, your monthly payment bill will be proportional to the amount you are currently making. You get a levy of get up to 15 years to pay it all off your student loan.

With a long-term payment option you'll be allowed to pay the least possible amount per month for 10 to 30 years. That however means that in 30 years you may have paid double the original amount of your loan. You have the flexibility of choosing to switch from one payment option to another, depending on your financial status.

However, if you find that you simply can't keep making monthly payments, no matter how small, you can choose to defer your loans. This means that for an amount of time that's negotiated between you and your lender, you won't pay any amount towards the loan. Interest, however, will continue to accrue, unless your loan subsidized.

Everyone is not qualified for loan deferment, unless you can prove that you are trapped in financial difficulty. Unlike deferment, forbearance gives you a shorter three-month break from your loan repayment. Your however may not grant you forbearance, unless he finds your request reasonable.

Student loan consolidation is another well-trodden path chosen by graduates each year. It allows you to put together your separate student loans into one big loan. This is a saviour when you cant afford to shell out a large sum each month.

Debt consolidation will bundle your student loans into one, with a single loan amount which will be much lesser than paying multiple loans. Some also choose consolidation because it's easier to keep track of the bill.