Current Refinance Rates

[somethingmorethanfree]

Anyone out there working on a refinance at the moment?

I'm already on a private loan, 5 year variable at around 3% (for now anyway)

Financial planner has advised us to move to 10 year fixed to meat other finance goals. We agree and are ready to move.

Here's what I've seen so far.

Current lender - offering around 5% - seems to be the best offer

Another lender - 5.61%

DRB - IMPOSSIBLE to fill out online application despite many efforts.

Anyone see a better rate?

Recent grad, reasonable (by med school standards) size loans.

[The White Coat Investor]

I see better rates, but don't know if you'll qualify for them. I think people are getting around 4% fixed on a 10 year at best. Why not apply to 3 or 4 of the listed lenders and see what you can get?

BTW, I hate seeing a doc moving from a 5 year term on student loans to a 10 year term. Do you really want to still have student loans in 10 years? I'm now 10 years out of residency and can't imagine still having student loans. I don't know your situation, but I'm skeptical of any advisor recommending you take longer to pay off your student loans presumably in order to invest more money with him.

Also, bear in mind that 3% variable may beat 5% fixed if rates don't rise or if they only rise a little or if they rise very slowly.

And why isn't your financial advisor doing all the hassle work of refinancing your loans anyway?

Good luck with your decision.

[somethingmorethanfree]

WCI,

Thanks for the reply! We were very hesitant to extend the terms as well. I think our situation makes it more reasonable.

The plan is to pay off the loans in about 7 years. Our advisor wants us to build up cash while navigating a job transition and move, then hit the loans hard in about 2 years. So the move to a longer term is part of a bigger plan that seems to make sense to me. Our advisor at the moment is not collecting any fees from us for investments - only working on a very affordable starter fee for the first few years.

Our advisor also pointed us to DRB because they forgive loans in case of death (morbid but have to be planned for). But despite many efforts, I simply cannot fill out their online application - and I'm not a technically challenged person. So I've got to try someone else. It looks like others are having good results with credible so I will give them a try and see if they can beat Earnest.

I'm going to think over the 5 year vs. 10 year again. We are not a fan of having debt at all. At the same time, would we want to say, not begin setting up a 529 for kids college while paying down debt? If we weren't facing a large tax challenge I would say we would just hit debt 100% and wait to save for kids college - but with the tax savings and caps each year it does start to make sense to me to save for college while still paying loans- though that can seem counterintuitive.