SoFi Blog

When you consolidate federal loans through the federal loan consolidation program, you’re combining multiple loans together with a resulting interest rate that’s the weighted average of your original loans’ rates.  When you refinance loans with a private lender, you’re also consolidating (i.e. combining) them, but the lender will use your financial information to give you a new, hopefully lower, interest rate.

SoFi intercepts the best customers of lenders like SLM before they have ripened into attractive borrowers. If its rapid growth continues, SoFi should be on the radar of those at SLM, Wells Fargo, and First Republic.

SoFi aims to revolutionize financial services- ultimately improving the system for everyone. Today, we’re able to offer significant savings and flexibility to US citizens, permanent residents, or non-permanent resident aliens who have previously attended a selection of Title IV accredited university or graduate programs, are employed, has a sufficient income from other sources, or hold a job offer with a start date within 90 days, have a responsible financial history, and a strong monthly cash flow.

When you took out student loans to pay for college or graduate school, you probably didn’t think too long and hard about your interest rate.  But now that you are repaying those loans, it’s a different story.  Over time, the amount you’re spending on interest is adding up and the amount you owe is increasing with it.

There is not much you can do about paying off some interest, but there are a few easy ways to decrease the total amount you’re paying.  We shared five of our top student loan hacks over on Credit.com – check out the full post here.

Social Finance, or SoFi, has refinanced more than half a billion dollars in student loans. The peer to peer lender has grown by nearly 800% to more than 550 universities.