Gold Level Scholarship Sponsor
I write a lot about student loan refinancing. I know some long term readers, especially those who don’t have student loans any more are probably sick of it. Frankly, it was a big pain for me to learn about student loan management myself, since I never really had any significant loans. But I keep writing about it for a few reasons.
First, it is immensely important to many readers. My email box and blog comments are one ongoing stream of student loan management questions. Second, the student loan issue is only getting worse with the rapid rise of tuition. It is now routine for me to run into docs who start their careers at $400K+ in loans. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the AVERAGE dentist’s student loan debt is rapidly approaching that mark. Third, too few doctors who should refinance their loans have done so. Since I have an affiliate agreement with most of these companies, I know exactly how many readers have refinanced their loans, and it is a tiny fraction of my readers, a large percentage of which should. I’m not sure why people are not refinancing. It can be a big pain to gather up all the paperwork and work through it. But when the benefit is literally tens of thousands of dollars of saved interest, it is more worthwhile than just about anything else I can write about for young doctors. It is so easy to “sell” the concept of student loan refinancing because it is a win-win-win. The reader saves thousands in interest and get a bonus of $100-500. I get some blog revenue. The refinancing institution makes a profit. The only real loser here is the taxpayer, since they lose a borrower who is almost sure to pay off their loans and is paying a very high interest rate. But even there, the government gets its money back to loan to another student who can go to school, which is the whole point of the government student loan program anyway.
The main caveat to student loan refinancing still applies:
IF YOU’RE GOING TO GET YOUR LOANS FORGIVEN, DON’T REFINANCE THEM.
Refinanced loans are not eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Now, that said, let’s move into what’s new in the last couple of months in this rapidly changing marketplace.
LendKey is a fairly new player to the WCI site (previously CU Student Loans), so I don’t have tons of feedback from readers yet. These guys are a little different in that they are a service that works with hundreds of different lenders, including some local to you, that may very well work to your advantage. They also have a unique feature in their “cosigner release” option, where it is easier to later get your cosigner off the loan. Their site states you can get a rate quote in 2 minutes. As a WCI reader, if you use the links on this page, you get an extra $300 in your pocket when you refinance with them. I suggest you put it toward the principle on the loan.
Perhaps the biggest news is that Laurel Road, which recently started refinancing student loans for residents, now has some competition. This new company, LinkCapital, also will refinance you despite the fact that you’re a resident. Even better, they require less than the $100 a month nominal payments that Laurel Road does, with 1$/month payments. Both of these companies are now charging less per month to residents than most will pay under the IBR or PAYE program. Improved cash flow as a resident plus saving thousands in interest is pretty awesome. Like with most of these companies, if you die or become permanently disabled, your loan goes away. They do have a $450K maximum. If you refinance through the links on this page, not only do I make some money, but they’ll give you an extra $400. Rates are competitive with longer term players (although nobody is really long-term in this market) like Laurel Road, SoFi, and CommonBond.
Not to be outdone, Laurel Road has gone one step further. Now you can even refinance as a medical student, but only as an MSIV who has matched. Granted, there aren’t a lot of months between Match Day and the start of internship (102 days to be exact) but on a $300K loan, the difference between 6.8% and 2% is $14,400 in interest a year, so over those 102 days you could save over $4000 in interest. And of course, they’ll still throw in an extra $300 for WCI readers who go through the links on this page.
The Other Guys
Gold Level Scholarship Sponsor
The other WCI advertisers are still refinancing student loans. Hundreds of WCI readers have refinanced with SoFi (Disclaimer), and dozens now with Common Bond. SoFi offers WCI readers $300* and Common Bond offers WCI readers $500 for refinancing through the links on this page.
I get occasional complaints about hassles from every company, but for the most part, readers are applying with multiple companies and taking the one giving them the lowest rate, as my business manager wrote when she recently refinanced her husband’s grad school loans. Both Laurel Road and SoFi are Gold Level sponsors for the WCI scholarship, which I very much appreciate.
Update: I’ve also added Credible as a WCI partner. They’re a little different from most lenders in that they let you apply with 9 different lenders (almost all different from those on this page) with a single application.
RePAYE Is Not The Same As PAYE
On a related note, I have often told people that if they can switch from the IBR program (payments = 15% of disposable income, 25 years until taxable forgiveness) to the PAYE program (payments = 10% of disposable income, 20 years until taxable forgiveness) that they should do so. Payments in both programs qualify toward the 120 payments required for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. However, it was recently brought to my attention that when you switch from IBR to PAYE, you’re not actually going into PAYE, you’re going into RePAYE, (Revised Pay As You Earn) which is slightly different. In general, it is better than IBR, but not as good as PAYE. The main features are:
- 10% of discretionary income (same as PAYE)
- 25 year taxable forgiveness for grad student loans (same as IBR)
- Only 50% of negative amortization is included (better than IBR and PAYE)
- No Married Filing Separately loophole (unlike IBR and PAYE)
- No cap on payments as an attending (unlike IBR and PAYE). This means if you’re making a ton as an attending, your payments may be larger than the standard 10 year payment plan, possibly eliminating potential PSLF.
The bottom line is that if you wish to go from IBR to RePAYE, but sure you’re not doing the Married Filing Separately thing and that you don’t expect your required payments as an attending to be much higher than the standard payments. If so, you may wish to stay in IBR, even with the higher payments as a resident or fellow.
More Feedback Wanted
As always in the comments section I (along with future readers) would love to hear about your experience with each of these companies. Have you refinanced your loans? Why or why not? What company did you use? What rate did you get and why? Was the final rate the same as the initial estimate? Did you choose variable or fixed and why? What term did you choose? How big of a hassle was the process? Comment below!
Seems like another great advantage of refinancing as an MSIV is the luxury of time at that stage of the game, if the paper work load is as burdensome as you describe.
If there are so many jumping into refi business, what are the risks or regulatory restrictions limiting competitive private loan originations? Mostly just curious, here. Is it risk of non-completion of the program? I would expect a simple actuarial solution. Must be more regulatory in nature. The only student loans (originated in mid 2000s) I still retain are only because I pay 0.07 % variable rate. Not a typo: less than a tenth of a percent.
I can’t figure out the answer to that question for the life of me.
I refinanced $210k a little over a year ago on finishing residency with DRB to about 3.4% variable for 10yr repayment. Since I continued to keep up with this blog, I learned interest rates had continued to drop due to market competition. So I recently applied to refinance with DRB, SoFi, and Earnest for a 5yr variable (since I now moonlight in addition to my main job and can afford higher payments). DRB and SoFi both came in pretty close at about 2 and a quarter percent, but Earnest quoted 1.9%. When I called DRB for a 10 day payoff and they asked why, I told them I got a lower rate. So they offered to match it to keep my business, and I let them since staying with the same bank seemed like it would be a much smoother process. While Earnest’s process is rather invasive (you basically hand over your logins to all your accounts as you would if you were linking them to Mint.com) it ended up getting me the best rates I’d seen advertised.
Why on earth would they need all of your logins? That is creepy levels of invasive. What if their systems ever get hacked. Your entire life is now compromised, or at least your entire financial life…which is your entire life.
If the trust concern is with Earnest specifically, that’s a risk you have to take if you want to consider a loan with them. It’s only for while they take a look at your finances to make a decision about your rate that they need the access. Once the loan is approved you can just change your passwords and not have to worry about it. The same concern goes for using a service like Mint.com or any bank login on their home website. Hacks happen. It’s a risk we take living in the modern world. But trying it out ended up saving me a couple grand in interest over the life of my loan given the lower interest rate they offered. So far it seems to have been worth it.
Good point.
The theory is your rate is more personalized (and hopefully lower.) The risks as you mention, are obvious. But there are people doing this sort of thing with Mint and other companies all the time. They say millenials just assume everyone knows everything about them so who cares, especially if they get a lower rate out of it.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
When you say “logins to all your accounts” is that referring to all student loan accounts?
Appreciate the article. My wife and I have been attendings (radiology and Primary Care) for 6 years and for better or worse have only paid the minimum on our student loans, opting to max our retirement 401k/PSP, backdoor Roth, frontload 529s, make some needed home improvements, and contribute some to defined cash benefit plan. Now its time to eliminate the student debt. We each hold about 95,000 at 3% and 3.5% respectively. We will probably chip away at it hoping to repay over next 5 years. Does it make sense for us to look into refinance, can we beat 3.5% and if so, which lenders would be our best bets. We carry no other non-mortgage debt and have excellent credit. Thanks for all you do!
If you have fixed federal loans at 3-3.5%, you will probably not get a better rate. You might be able to get a lower variable rate, but you can see that the lowest fixed rates start in the 3.25%-3.5% range.
Federal loans also have some advantages such as forbearance in case of emergencies. Those are gone with a private lender. Not the end of the world for the average doc, but something to keep in mind.
The lenders are fairly competitive with each other, but if you’re already at 3-3.5% fixed, you may not do any better unless you’re willing to take variable interest rate risk.
I applied about a month ago. With all of these lenders the lowest interest rate is about 1.9 or 2%. To get that lowest interest rate, you have to go with a variable interest rate and the shortest loan term (5 years). If you go with a fixed interest rate and/or a longer term, the interest rate will be higher. But after you apply and are approved, they usually give you all the options so you can look and decide after you apply.
I say apply to at least 3 lenders. All the paper work and documents you need are pretty much the same, so once you’ve found and scanned all the documents you need to apply to one lender, it’s not much more work to apply to a few more.
The point about PSLF and RePAYE payments potentially being higher than 10 year standard repayments is not relevant, and shouldn’t be a reason to avoid switching from IBR.
Why? 10 year standard repayment is PSLF-eligible in and of itself (even though using it for the whole 120 payments clearly wouldn’t net any benefit). Therefore, use RePAYE until one’s attending salary would result in a supra-10 year payment, then switch to 10 year standard payments for the duration.
According to: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/public-service#qualifying-repayment-plan
“Even though the 10-year Standard Repayment Plan is a qualifying repayment plan for PSLF, you will not receive PSLF unless you make the majority of your 120 qualifying monthly payments under an income-driven repayment plan.”
That wording seems concerning to me
That’s just stating the obvious: if you’re on a 10 year/120 payment repayment plan and you make 120 payments then you won’t have any balance left to forgive at the end of the term. Some of those 120 payments must be lower by virtue of IBR or PAYE.
That “the majority of your 120 qualifying monthly payments” doesn’t make any mathematical sense: even if one made one IBR payment and 119 10 year plan payments then one would have forgiveness for [10 year payment – IBR payment].
That’s just referring to the fact that your debt will be gone if you make 120 standard payments….because you’ll have paid off.
Good point, assuming you’re allowed to switch from Repaye payments to standard payments.
Posted this on here before several times đŸ™‚
Refinanced my resident wife with DRB a year ago. Went with the 15 year term (instead of 10), strangely because the lower payment with 15yr term allowed us to qualify under their fairly strict debt/income ratio. Plan is to pay it off in 5 years. 3.48% variable rate at the time, now 3.52% and I suspect something like 3.55% soon. Maximum theoretical rate is 9%.
Saved us a ton of money over the last year, and we’ve made a pretty big dent in principal too vs the increasing principal with the fed 6.8% rate.
In another year I might try to refinance to a better rate with another company as we’ll both be making a little more money with less debt. Also wouldn’t mind grabbing a $300 incentive along the way.
Recently refinanced with DRB a few months ago. It was a little disappointing to see them advertise “Variable 1.90-3.98%” even on this very site, then give me a quote for 4.05% variable (3.85% after discount for using their checking accounts). However I just made my first payment and saw that it went directly to the principal, which is a nice bonus. I’m not going to complain about saving $6000/year and a $300 bonus either. Good to see more options available now.
Sorry you didn’t get a better rate. The rates I list do assume the discount for using their accounts. I guess I have a hard time believing anyone wouldn’t take that, even with the extra hassle. 0.25% on $300K is $750 a year. Seems worth an extra account to me.
I refinanced with CommonBond a few months ago. It was as painless as possible with type of thing. I would recommend to anyone and the 300 bonus was nice. I believe they sent it to my paypal account.
I had a great experience refinancing my medical school debt through SoFi which offered me the lowest rate. Their customer service was particularly good. 5-stars!
Glad to hear it!
Refinanced with LinkCapital. As a resident they offer fixed rates only between 4.42-7.94%. If you are an attending, your variable rates are 2.08-6.37 (fixed 3.49-7.74). I have a high credit score and was offered the best rate (they accidentally offered my the attending rates as well at first; however, repayment starts immediately for those, so I passed :D)
The entire process is easy and super quick. I was approved immediately and received my final rate within 24-48 hours after uploading all the necessary documents. As a resident, they wanted proof of residency (got a letter from my PD), a paycheck, and loan payoff amounts. Easy to upload (I took pictures with my cell phone and uploaded the photos).
When they gave me attending rates at first, one of their reps changed my application over and re-uploaded all my documentation to the new application without any hassle or extra work for me. Was really pleased with the entire process.
I was doing PSLF and IRB for the first 3 years of residency, but now IRB payments jumped to $400+/month and I didn’t qualify for PAYE (one loan was prior to the arbitrary date they set by like 2 weeks). Given that I will most likely join PP, I felt it was best to have an extra $400 a month now and reduce my interest by 3% rather then “chance” PSLF.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Link Capital is relatively new to me but as only the second option for residents, it’s great to hear about good service. The detail about the slightly higher rates for residents is important too, although if I were a resident going into private practice, I’d apply with DRB and Link Capital and take the lowest rate!
I had a good experience with CommonBond. I refinanced some 5% fixed rate loans with about 6 years left on them to 2% variable over 5 years. To my mind, the game-changer that would get me to refinance my remaining $80,000 federal loans consolidated at 3.75% fixed for 20 years would be a way to make the debt tax-deductible, which is by making it a home-equity loan. IBR may be the doctor tax loophole, but tax deductibility of student loan interest income phase outs may be the cruelest joke in the tax code. I don’t know of many attending physicians who can deduct student loan interest. If you offered me an $80k home-equity loan at 4% fixed for 10 years, it would be worth it to me if the interest were tax-deductible, making the effective interest rate under 3%. I know SoFi is licensed as a mortgage lender and some of the others are working on that as well. I’m not sure why this isn’t ready for prime time. I would love to see some of these players move into this space. I also think this is a space physician mortgage lenders could move into.
Great ideas I’d love to see put into practice.
I went with LinkCapital because of the full deferral through residency and their rates were competitive. My experience was great! I’ve had a few friends refi with them as well. I would definitely reccomend them.
This may be a silly question. I have three loans of about 66K, 40K, and 17K. The interests rates are 2.8%, 4.8%, and 6.8%. Is it possible to only refinance the 40K and 17K loans? I’d like to keep 66K fixed @ 2.8% as i dont think these companies can’t beat that fixed rate.
Yes you can refinance and consolidate your higher interest loans. I think LinkCapital’s minimum was 15K.
I’d like to know this too.
Yes, you can do that.
From my understanding of refinancing federal loans to private, if you want to increase or decrease your monthly payments that is not very easy. I’ve been practicing for 3 years and my husband has 2 years of training left. We still have 280K combined in student loans at 6.8% and 5%, I’ve made a significant dent into our principal over the past 3 years with a lot of moonlighting! Now I am starting to decrease my hours so I can focus on starting a family and with my income decreased I’ve had to decrease my monthly payments. With all our loans being federal it was VERY easy to call the lender and have my monthly payments decreased with no problems. And while I worked hard for the past 3 years it was easy to pay extra without any penalties. From my understanding of refinancing you no longer have those benefits. Is that correct?
Mostly yes. Less flexibility.
So I’m looking into refinancing as a PGY-1 in emergency medicine. What’s the catch on the resident rates between different banks? Also, if approved, is it stupid to go with a variable rate, knowing I won’t start making huge dents in my loan until after residency and I’ll probably have this loan for 6-8 yrs? And how do I know which term length to pick, since I won’t know my income situation until after I finish residency? These options of refinancing now sound great since I have a current average interest of 7.3%, and $100/month is less than what IBR is requiring of me. I have about $350K in federal loans (private school in SoCal, ouch), and 2 dependents. Thanks for the great post, love your stuff WCI!!
$350K is a lot. But the average EP is making something like $370K a year these days. Is there some reason you don’t think you can pay off your loans within 5 years of residency completion on an income north of $250K a year? I don’t see why you can’t. So I’d take the 5 year. 5-8 years is a reasonable time period to run the interest rate risk myself to me, but may not be for you. If you want more security, pick a 10 year and a fixed rate. It’s almost surely going to be better than 7.3% anyway. But be darn sure you won’t be going for PSLF before refinancing.
I have previously looked at refinancing, but it seemed like I could never get the numbers to work in favor of it relative to simply hammering away at my existing loans – it usually came out to only $2-3000 of difference at most. I’m dipping my toes into the process now, though – one question: I’m assuming most places will look at total household income, instead of only the applicant? My spouse has both a significantly higher income and significantly lower debt load, so it would definitely help.
She would have to co-sign for them to consider her income/debt. Lots of good reasons for her not to do that.
What are the downsides of her co-signing?
She is responsible for the loan in case something happens to you. Death, disability, divorce, not matching, can’t get a job etc.
I just did an online application with DRB. My current rates at 2.75 and 3.00 at a total of $243,000. After entering in preliminary data including income, current loans including rates, they estimated my rate to be between 3.5 and 6.5%. What exactly are these loaners talking about 1.9%? Silly……
You did an online application when you have fixed rates of 3% and expected to do significantly better? These are great deals for most residents and new attendings who have 6.8%+ loans, not those who graduated with me and have rates of 1-3%. The 1.9% is a variable, 5 year rate for the very best borrowers. Some WCI readers have gotten it, but most don’t get that.
You can indeed still switch into PAYE if you’re a “new” post-2007 borrower with qualifying loans. RePAYE isn’t actually out yet as far as I can tell. Income driven repayment options are currently, IBR, IBR for new borrowers (10% cap, similar to PAYE), and PAYE (and ICR, which no one does). REPAYE should become available in November/December (the rules haven’t been finalized yet, which is mentioned in the NYTimes article you linked to).
WCI
Please remove/edit Link capital from lenders section. Inaccurate and complete waste of time
Please mention in common bond section that they ONLY can re finance your loans if your school is listed in their database. Texas has 9 medical schools and they only have 2 listed.
Thanks for the feedback on Common Bond. Can you tell me what happened with Link Capital? I’ve heard from several readers very happy with their experience.
I was going to mention this elsewhere, but I just had a great experience with LinkCapital. DRB was taking FOREVER on my second set of loans. Finally had enough and I applied for LinkCapital refinancing this week. Had a decision and a rate two days later. Better yet, the fixed rate is .4% lower than DRB offered and it extends the loan term from 5 years to 7 years not including residency deferment.
Not sure yet how there month to month service will be, but it was an amazing experience compared to DRB’s current process.
One thing I did to speed things up is uploaded all the documents I thought they might ask for regardless of what they said they wanted. This way it did not take a few days to process only to find out something was missing.
Great to hear. Competition will hopefully make every company better.
Long application process entering loans to find out at the end that application can’t be processed.
My guess is that they are using my current loans that are in repayment against me.
Not sure what you mean by long application process. It’s about as long as the others that I have done. If you are an attending, you have a lot of good options and don’t need to rely on LinkCapital/DRB. If you are a resident/fellow, you really don’t have an options right now. LinkCapital/DRB will give you the best rate because they take into account future income. None of the others do that.
Just got off the phone with link Capitol
I don’t have a mortgage loan
My car is paid off
My starting income as an attending is $300,000/year
I am renting in order to pay off my loans quicker. I owe $200,000 in students loans. I am living like I was when I was a fellow.
They are asking for a co signer. Seriously ? How much more income do you need ? 1,000,000 / year ?
Total waste of time.
Why can’t it be processed? Was something missing? Or did you just not qualify with them?
Everything was submitted.
They are asking for a co signer.
Makes no sense on my annual salary.
Overall a bad experience
Something is missing in this conversation and I am not sure what it is. Are you an attending now or will you be soon? That makes a difference in how you apply.
I am an attending now and applied as such
Perhaps a disclosure is needed that you need to earn more than $300,000 otherwise a co signer will be required should be included in their website.
I guess it depends on how much debt you have. For example, if you owed $600K and only made $200K, I’d want a co-signer too. You may find the same thing with the other companies, although they all probably draw the line in a little different place.
Edit: Never mind, I saw you said you had debt of $200K with a salary of $300K. I’m also surprised to see a co-signer requirement.
Is it 1099 or W2 income? If 1099, did you have two years worth of income? These seem like small details, but this effects what the underwriters do.
Yeah, but you’ve got to admit it’s lame to need a co-signer with a higher than average income and lower than average loans. Obviously we don’t have every detail the underwriters had, but still.
Hi Alex, My name is Lauren. I work at LinkCapital. I’m so sorry to hear that your application process has been so frustrating. We do the best we can to provide the highest level of customer service. Based on the information you’ve shared it sounds like their could be a simple error in your application.
I would be happy to help! Feel free to email me directly at [email protected] for further assistance.
The cosigner thing would be necessary if he were a 1099 employee and he had not worked for two years. He could have been guaranteed 300k his first year, but everything based off performance every year after that. If I were a bank, I don’t know if I would take that risk lightly.
Will probably co-apply to linkcapital and commonbond in neXT few days. DRB being painfully slow. 90+ days into application and stuck at the waiting for final loan documents stage despite multiple calls and emails. They actually called me today to say they’re aware and they are still processing a high volume of loans. Seems to be a systemic issue. It’s just annoying to take another hard inquiry on the credit report though…
A hard credit inquiry is worth 3 points off your score. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I spoke with DRB on the phone today and they said something about waiting on Funding Approval. I wonder if they ran out of money to lend and are needing to get more capital. Wouldn’t surprise me too much considering how quickly they became a major player in the doctor student loan refinancing industry.
Definitely have been lots of growing pains with all these companies the last couple of years. Remember that 24 months ago you couldn’t refinance your loans with anyone!
@Arkydore, for LinkCapital did you upload 10 day payoff statements for your loans or 30 day statements? Their website says 10 day but the checklist on campusdoor says 30 day.
I used the 10 day payoff I downloaded from Navient’s website under each loan.
I currently have my loans with Navient. Attending 2.5 years out with 170K @ 4.6% and 18K @6.6%.
Should I look at refi?
Currently paying $1500 monthly. Could definitely afford more
Sure. Why not refinance and pay more each month? Those aren’t mutually exclusive.
@ Brian
I would go ahead and stick with DRB
I have not had a great experience with link capital
Update on my link capital application
My co signer requirement needed an override to get through. I thought everything was finally done only to be notified yesterday that the application was entered incorrectly on their end. I was informed to withdraw the application and re – apply only to have the co-signer requirement be applied again to my application.
Priceless.
“Like with most of these companies, if you die or become permanently disabled, your loan goes away.”
I searched but couldn’t find additional info on this statement. None of these companies mentioned it on their websites. I have federal loans at approx 5% and want to refinance but I definitely don’t want to lose this important benefit as I don’t know what the future holds. Correct me if I’m wrong but forgiveness of debt as a result of death or permanent disability is like a free insurance for assets and estate. I have to get a refinance offer of 1% or less before I will consider giving up the death and disability protection. Maybe someone from Sofi, DRB or any other company can shed some light on the terms and conditions of their loans.
I don’t have it in writing, but I don’t recall one of these companies that doesn’t forgive loans when you die.
I am in the process of refinancing with DRB and it is in the provisional offer/agreement that they sent me. I am not sure where on the website or if it is on their website but the loans are definitely forgiven through DRB upon death or serious disability. The rates advertised have been lower than what was offered and they have a hefty origination fee eventhough I have above average credit and under 100k of debt as a family medicine resident.
my mistake there is no origination fee on the refinancing offer I received
I was going to question that. I don’t think any of these companies have origination fees.
I just started my attending position about 1 month ago. I have <200K loans currently due moonlighting (50K with 4.8% interest rate and 120K at 6.8%). Does it make sense to wait to have a W2 showing my new salary or to apply to refinance loans now with only previous residency salary?
I’d probably wait for one or two W-2s, but it may take that long to get through the process.
Finally got funding date for DRB! Question to DRB re-financers: How easy has it been to make extra payments over and above the $100/month they require. I had read that in the past there were a lot of hang-ups with having to have your bank physically mail checks to them, then processing the check into your DRB account and then moving the money from your DRB account to your loan. I also read that there was a glitch in the system that wouldn’t let you make an additional payment for 14 or so days surrounding your automatic payment. Have these issues been smoothed out?
This is no longer an issue. I think you will like the new interface.
For dentists, the ADA has just partnered up with DRB, giving qualified members a .25% reduction on DRB’s already competitive refinancing rates (link here: student.drbank.com/ada).
WCI, I know this means some people may not click your link now . . .
You do know why the ADA has partnered up, right? It’s up to you whether you’d prefer to support the ADA and get a 0.25% reduction in rate, or WCI and get a few hundred bucks they can apply to principal. If readers prefer rate reductions to cash, I could go back to each of these companies and try to arrange that.
But the most important thing is that readers refinance their loans, no matter who they do it with and no matter who makes money off it.
Can you please elaborate on this comment? Are you suggesting the ADA has partnered up to boost the organization’s coffers?
In the email sent to us, the ADA said it was essentially passing on the sign-up commission on to its members as the interest discount.
The vast majority of dentists are members of ADA already, so its not really a matter of choosing to support the ADA in order to get the discount.
That would be an unusual step for an organization like this. Typically with deals like this (and they’re usually with insurance companies/agents) the organization gets some revenue from it. Kudos to ADA if that is truly the case. Obviously I don’t get the emails.
I was mistaken. It was not in the email sent. It was in the issue of the ADA News that announced the deal and had a full article about it. The following is the excerpt I was remembering.
“…Many times, endorsed vendors will compensate the endorsing organization. However, the compensation resulting from the DRB endorsement will be given to the ADA members in the form of the additional 0.25 percent discount in the loan rate.”
Good on them.