Current Fed Fund Rate and Student Loan Refinancing - Variable vs Fixed

[SerrateAndDominate]

I submitted applications for my wife. ~$90k remaining. I believe Laurel Road was quoting 5 year fixed at 3% and Splash 5 year fixed at 2.88%. We’ll miss out on the bonuses because we’ve used Laurel Road before, Splash requires 100k for the bonuses.

Has anyone got them to budge on the bonuses or match rates?

I've always had Laurel Road match a rate pretty quickly. Not sure about the cash back bonuses. I've forfeited those since I get the AMA discount.

[Dr.Blue]

If you want to pay it off in 5 years or less, variable is almost always the right answer. We started paying my wife's loans aggressively last summer. 515k after 6 years of residency/fellowship due to fed loan interest rate accrual and giving up on pslf at year 5 since her attending jobs were limited to qualify. Refied with commonbond at 1.74% variable for 5 years and currently it's at 0.71%. We paid a big chunk before refi to $370k but now just pay the 5 year monthly rate and at $300k. Variable is great because rates are low now. You want to be at the lowest interest rate when your principal is highest and variable provides that currently. If you are currently with Federal loans you may want to hold off for a few months though as their rate is 0 and who knows if some new loan forgiveness comes out of this whole covid mess.

[dayman]

I just refinanced my Laurel Road to 1.74% 5-year variable, down from 3.795%. I am a bit annoyed because their rate offer went as low as 1.04% while they were dragging their butts to finalize my paperwork.

How long did they take to finalize after you submitted all the documents? My application to refinance with them is pending, all documents approved, just waiting for final approval.

[SerrateAndDominate]

How long did they take to finalize after you submitted all the documents? My application to refinance with them is pending, all documents approved, just waiting for final approval.

Hey, sorry for the delay.

This most recent refinance has taken longer, a little over 14 days. They took 2-3 days to approve some forms I uploaded then wanted a copy of my diploma, which was weird since they never requested it and I was already a customer. My rates kept dropping and once reached 1.04% for 5-year variable with all the discounts. Naturally, the rate jumped back up to 1.74% so I made it a point to politely tell them that they were the limiting reagent to our transaction.

It may be worth shooting them a chat/email tomorrow. I imagine some of their delay is having people work remotely. Heck, I'd even try to get a lower offer from someone else and push Laurel Road into matching it

[CFEonline]

Hey, sorry for the delay.

This most recent refinance has taken longer, a little over 14 days. They took 2-3 days to approve some forms I uploaded then wanted a copy of my diploma, which was weird since they never requested it and I was already a customer. My rates kept dropping and once reached 1.04% for 5-year variable with all the discounts. Naturally, the rate jumped back up to 1.74% so I made it a point to politely tell them that they were the limiting reagent to our transaction.

It may be worth shooting them a chat/email tomorrow. I imagine some of their delay is having people work remotely. Heck, I'd even try to get a lower offer from someone else and push Laurel Road into matching it

Where were you able to see the most current rate changing while you were waiting? Were you continuing to ask them for quotes during the process?

[SerrateAndDominate]

Where were you able to see the most current rate changing while you were waiting? Were you continuing to ask them for quotes during the process?

For Laurel Road, they would send out an email notification anytime there was a rate change during the application process