Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with consolidation

Citiassist assistance

Sara Anne — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:30:53 -0800

In order to pay for graduate school a few years back, I took out two CitiAssist loans to pay for food and rent. A couple of years on, I've consolidated all of my federal loans, but the CitiAssist loans can't be consolidated with federal loans. A couple of years on, I have the kind of paycheck that one gets with a degree in the humanities. I've kept up on the loans, but the interest rate just ballooned again, and soon I will have to start choosing between my student loans and health care. I'd like to refinance the CitiAssist, but I don't know where to start looking, and the Citibank website is incredibly unhelpful (surprise!).
And please, I don't need a lecture about my lack of financial savvy- I know that I've gotten into a mess, I need some guidance about how to start being financially wise.

Differences between Excel Pivot Tables

DZ-015 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:31:36 -0800

Why is the functionality of an Excel Pivot table different depending on whether you use a list or a multiple consolidation range? This is driving me crazy.

I have an Excel Workbook containing 6 worksheets. When I create a pivot table from a list, I can drag the field buttons onto my table and create a pretty nice report. When I try the same thing using a multiple consolidation range (data from various sheets), I only have 4 field buttons: Row, Column, Value and Page1. All my sheets have identical column headings.

Is this by design?

Thanks.

Economy's effect on my debt

Etta Hollis — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:41:03 -0800

[LoanFilter] I have 20k in six Federal Stafford loans. Consolidate now? I've read past posts, and most seem to lead towards consolidation. However, good friends have also deemed consolidation as death.
What's the deal? ? Obviously I want out from under financial debt ASAP and the current financial woes make me nervous. Thoughts?

SallieMae won't cut me a deal, who else will?

SansPoint — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:12:25 -0800

How can I consolidate my PRIVATE student loans, to make my financial life a little easier? I recently consolidated my student loans through the Federal Loan Consolidation program. My payments are now over $100/mo less than before, which is wonderful... but I could only consolidate my Federal Loans, the Staffords and such. I have about $40,000^1. in loans through Sallie-god-damn-Mae, though, that I'm paying $250/mo on. I tried consolidating those through Sallie Mae, but $40,000 isn't quite enough to consolidate with them, and now they're not even doing private loan consolidation. This is bad.

There are private loan consolidation places, but... who the hell do I trust to a) be legit, b) not go out of business or go bust due to the stupid economy, c) be *really* legit, d) not screw me over. Honestly, I don't know where to look. This is, as always, where MeFi comes in.

If it helps, right now I make around $30k a year, before taxes, insurance, and other deductions at my day job, and a varying second income of $400-$800/mo (on average) at my night job. Actually, my night job netted me $17,0000 last year, but that was my only source of income and it was five days a week—I'm down to four days a week now. I started my day job in October, after graduating in May. I don't have the cleanest record in borrower history... failing out of college, missing payments due to low income, and general idiocy, but I've begun to make up for it.

Who can I trust to take these private loans, and say, "Buddy, you can pay us $200 a month, instead."? Help!

^1. All told, having only this much in loans isn't as bad as some people, but since I'm working two jobs to make sure my head stays as much above water as it can right now... well, I don't want to hear any finger-waggling on financial irresponsibility.

Open-source or trial de-duplication tools anyone can recommend?

penciltopper — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:46:43 -0800

I have several old data backup devices, with some overlap on what's on them. I'd like to consolidate them all onto a new device, but without having 3 copies of the overlapping redundant data. I think the term I'm looking for is de-duplication. Any open source or free trial tools that MeFites can recommend? I'm looking at several old SNAP! Server devices that were used for data backups. The information on all three is valuable, but there is some overlap of what's contained on them. And what's on there is so jumbled and disorganized that there's no way to sort it all out manually without an unreasonable amount of effort.

The hard drives on these things are basically at full capacity, so a new backup device is needed. Rather then keep 4 devices networked to access all this information (and continue having to search 3 devices to find a file), I'd like to consolidate all that data onto a new device as one big set of files.

So I'm looking for some tool that will let me get a new device (with a larger capacity), point some software at the three old devices, and tell it to move the contents of the three old devices onto the one new device, BUT NOT to copy multiples/duplicates. This should empty out the older devices so they can be wiped and disposed of, and give me one new device with all of their contents, but eliminating the need to store dozens of GB of overlapping files they all used to contain.

Anything anyone can recommend?

How can I investigate/remedy possibly misleading loan agreements from several years ago?

slavlin — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:18:19 -0800

Debt/Loan Filter: I was stupid with credit and debt when I was younger. Is there anything I can do now? More details inside. When I was in college, I did not manage my credit properly and wound up taking out a debt consolidation loan. I started out with about $8000 in debt in 1999 and due to poor choices on my part and, I believe, possibly misleading loan officers, I still have $4000 left to repay now.

I refinanced it a couple of times, which was dumb, but I suspect that the loan companies misled me about how much I was refinancing and tacked on additional charges. I don't even know if I could track down copies of those original loan documents, but is there anything that anyone could think that I could do to investigate or remedy my situation, without increasing my debt more, of course?

Credit Card Ugh

cellphone — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:20:05 -0800

How to get a new credit card with a high limit to transfer a bunch of smaller balances to when your FICO score looks more like your bowling score? Well, not quite as bad as a bowling score. I have a handful of cards, adding up to about $5000 total in balances, with no single balance more than $1500. I'd like to get a new card to transfer all these balances to, with ideally a lower rate (below 20% would be nice :( ), so I can stop trying to keep track of all these payments dates, simplify my money management a little, set up automatic payments, and forget about it.

I've made a few months of late payments on everything due to everything being a little crazy because of my wife's health, so my credit rating has taken a real dive.

Personal experiences, ideas?

What should I do about my debt problems?

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:49:25 -0800

I am having some serious financial issues. Who, in Eastern Canada, can I talk to about this kind of thing? I had no income for two months and, as a result of that and some spending over the last few years, incurred about 8k in unsecured debt. In addition to this, I have around 14k in Student Loans. I have applied for Student Loan relief but was denied and was not given a clear reason as to why.

Debt consolidation would make sense *if* I wasn't planning on going back to full-time school in the fall. I could avoid my student loans for a while and make payments to my unsecured debt by itself if I did that. In the short term, though, I've got 190/month going to student loans and another 300/month going to the banks and I can't afford that. What can I do? I don't want to consolidate my loans if I can avoid my student loan in another 5 months. Thanks in advance.

Student loan consolidation scam avoidance

jennyjenny — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:39:33 -0800

Student loan consolidation and the current economy: Should I consolidate now, or wait a few months? Are interest rates as they apply to student loan consolidation likely to drop? Bonus question: are you happy/unhappy with the company you consolidated with? I have (lots of) student loans to consolidate, and I have until June before many of them come out of post-school deferment. Should I do it now, or later, or at all, and with whom? I know that there are certain loans I should not consolidate, as I am in a health profession and might potentially get some of them forgiven -- these are perkins loans, correct?

Also, can anyone point me to a reputable resource where I can read a lot about this? there seems to be an awful lot of hard-sell scammy stuff out there, and I can only do this once.

Student loan consolidation- so what?

rryan — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:35:52 -0800

I'm trying to evaluate student loan interest rates for possible consolidation as I get quotes. All the consolidated rates (so far) seem to be the same. What am I looking for? I've got nearly $33000 in subsidized Stafford loans at 2.8%. I've got another nearly $46000 in unsubsidized Stafford loans at between 6.6% and 6.8%

I've contacted a few companies regarding consolidating, as well as checked out more than a few online calculators for student loans. They all seem to take the average for a consolidated percentage: 5.25% If I auto-debit: %5.00 (monthly payments of $441)

Other than finding a reputable lender (found a few on here already), what am I shopping for?

Plus, is there anyway to judge/guess what interest rates will go to this summer (higher/lower?) If I consolidate then the drop... Or do I just bite the bullet.

Or can I just not consolidate at all? By adding up and taking the raw average of the interest rates I now have, I get %5.15. With the auto-debit, I can beat that at %5.00- but not by much.

Please ensmarten me about LAN/WAN/Co-Lo

bartleby — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:40:44 -0800

3 LANS are getting hard to manage. Please ensmarten me about WANs and Colocation. Right now we've got 3 physical sites for the same firm/domain, each with its own MS 2003 server and dataset. This separated setup has worked well to keep the others up and running if one has downtime/problems.

But now we're needing more flexibility / integration across the sites. The VPN we've currenly got has an upload bottleneck at about 500kbps, which is too slow for file transfers, much less application services, between the sites.

So we've set up Terminal Servers at each site, so that if staff at Site A need to use applications or manipulate data that's on Site B's server, they launch Remote Desktop and work on it "at" Site B via RDP.

This is working for now, but it's getting hard to manage all those boxes, back them up, etc.

So I've been thinking about moving from 3 servers with three datasets, one for each location, to one big fat server which consolidates all the data. But I don't know precisely how to locate that server, then serve up that data with speed to the various sites.

If it was just a webserver, that would be one thing - but this is going to be an applications server. And I'm just a recently unfrozen caveman with no knowledge of your "high tech".

So I've got Questions:

1) Say I host the consolidated server at Site A - would Sites B and C basically have to "remote" in to get anything done? (Let's say there was a site to site T1 in place).

2) If that's the case, am I better off just going for a colocator and having everyone working "remotely", with the server serving up desktops for everyone? Can that be done with just a T1 from each office to the colo? (40 users total).

3) If that's the case, then all the workstations basically become thin clients, right? So I can justify the colo expense by saying that we won't have to upgrade every workstation's hardware/software for Vista, right?

4) If all the processing, etc was handled by a fat server in a colo, could Users still have dual monitors? How would Printing work?

5) A different way altogether - keeping the 3 existing servers:
Let's say that the total dataset is 100gb, and there's maybe 3gb of changes made each day.

If there was a point-to-point-to-point T1 connection between the offices, would it be possible to Consolidate the data once, then Clone it onto the other two servers, then keep Replicating any changes?

Such that each site would keep working on its own server on its own LAN, but something in the background would keep each server a mirror of the others? (User adds a document to a folder hosted on Server A. Auto-magic happens and that new file is added to the servers at Sites B and C.) This would keep users from dealing with VPN/remote hassles, and also be good for continuity, as if one server goes down, the other two are identical copies).

This 5) scenario would be ideal, but I don't know if it only exists on the shelf between my personal jetpack and and my Mr. Fusion.

I know this is complex for an AskMeFi, but I need to figure this out while also working overtime and going back to school to learn this kind of stuff. There's lots of knowledge in this hive's mind, so I'm trying to use some of it. If you're in the Bay Area and do this for a living, send me an email.

Find me an education loan consolidator

calistasm — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:33:57 -0800

Recommend me a good educational loan consolidator. My SO has about 40K in assorted federal loans and we would like to simplify the process by making only one payment and lock in one interest rate. Is there one lender that you guys would recommend over another? Are there any we should run screaming from? What we would like to do is reduce the amount of interest paid (it's tax deductible, yes, but it's still interest) and get a company that knows what they're doing (i.e., not Wells Fargo). I know about Graduate/Collegiate Leverage and will be giving them a call, but I was wondering if there was more info than what is in the archives. Total Higher Education's insta-rebate without x number of on-time payments intrigues me, but I can't help but feel there's some sort of catch, even when the math is in front of me. Thoughts? Recommendations? Handy spreadsheets? I would love to hear it all.

Is the car dealer talking out of his hat?

Rc — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 06:42:50 -0800

So I finally bought my first car (not counting the 20 year old brown volvo I part owned for 3 months in Canada). During the 'chat' with the finance person at the dealership he was adamant about two things that puzzled me 1) Consolidating your car loan and home loan is a bad idea, it does not help to repay the debt quicker. The only time people should consider cosolidating debt is when they are struggling with repayments.

2) He advises people that it is better not to repay their car loan early because a car is a depreciating asset.

When I asked him he could not really clarify either of these points. It had been a long day for me so I let it go; but now it is niggling at me.

Yes he is biased; he makes his living getting people to take loans through him. Am I missing something though? I can;t see how they can be true (unless the car is bought by a business and the interest is a tax deduction).

If you can put this to rest for me I would be grateful.

Saving the Kitchen Sink

Raze2k — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:45:30 -0800

Recently I was contacted by a company called Liberty Settlements regarding my outstanding debt. Apparently I had clicked a checkbox at some point while browsing the Internet and they received my name as a result. The caller spoke with me briefly about debt and mentioned that they were able to usually reduce debt by a significant amount (with $10k debt, he estimated a person would save about $4500).

I asked him to send me more information via e-mail and mentioned that I was intrigued but needed to do a bit of research on the company before even considering giving any more information. The gent was very friendly, non-invasive and seemed very helpful. He said that he completely understood my concern and suggested that I check the BBB, with whom they aren't registered but allegedly they have to record all complaints regardless.

One anecdote that he offered was about the company wanting to help people who were actually in debt for good reasons. He remarked that they recently denied a person who had maxed out all of his credit cards buying a new Lexus as a side story.

As a person with a sizeable debt that I'd like to pay off the idea of saving money and consolidating my debt into a single payment (despite bad credit at the moment) seems very appealing. Does anyone have any experience with Liberty Settlements or any similar companies? Is this a scam?

loan consolidation? now or later?

jare2003 — Fri, 12 May 2006 09:54:43 -0800

LoanConsolidationFilter. I know this question has been asked before, but I can't find any information about my specific student loan cirucmstance. Please help! Should I consolidate in-school and lock in low rates? Ive been told i need to do it before July 1st or i cant consolidate in school anymore! I am finishing graduate school in December of 2006, with a masters degree. (one year masters, jan - dec)

I just recently graduated in December 2005 with an undergraduate degree. I currently have about 35k in debt from undergraduate, and $7000 from this current semester. I will need to take out roughly $12,000 for next and final semester, and then I will be done.

The majority of my undergraduate debt (75%) is in federal direct loans of various types through my university, the remainder (25%) is private loans.

My graduate school debt is all federal loans.

Ive been told I should consolidate my loans before July 1st, 2006 - when the govt. removes a loophole making loan consolidation possible while in-school - also to take advantage of lower interest rates and everything else.
Will it consolidate my fall 2006 loans as well?

Finally, what consolidator should i go through? I seem to get barraged with info from every side. Ive heard good things about doing it through Dept of Ed or Sallie Mae.

Thanks again for answering. I know similiar questions have come up before, but I wanted to make very sure before i made an irreversible decision.

my life is in default

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 11:08:53 -0800

I'm in (defaulted) student-loan hell. I have three lenders. I'm in default with all three. (This is 100% due to terrible decisions and denial on my part. Please feel free to chastise me, but note that I'm well aware of my foolishness).

Recently, one of the lenders tracked me down and I started a rehab program. Then another lender tracked me down, and I started another rehab program. While I was glad to finally be on the road out of hell, my finances couldn't stand the strain. I currently have to borrow money from friends just to pay the monthly rehab fees.

I realized that it was only a matter of time before the third lender found me, and at that point I would be totally screwed. So I took some advice and found a company willing to work with me to get my loans consolidated. I'm in this process now, and once it happens, I will be making one monthly payment that I can afford.

But today, the third lender found me. He left me a message and told me to call back ASAP. I don't know what to do. The consolidation won't go through for 30-60 days. I am totally out of funds. I don't have credit cards. I'm sure I can't get a loan. I don't have anything to sell. If I could just somehow hide out for 60 days, I'd be fine. I'm really scared that if I try this, the lender will garnish my wages, in which case I will not be able to pay the other two lenders, and I will be in double default. Once that happens, I won't be able to consolidate.

Any ideas?

school loan consolidation

jmd82 — Fri, 20 May 2005 10:38:30 -0800

It's the time to consolidate my school loans, or so I hear. My question is have any of you had good/bad experiences with loan consolidation companies? Are there any I should stay away from? With school interest rates at a low, will my payments be the same regardless of whom I consolidate with? I'm looking for pretty much any experience fellow MeFites have with loan consolidation so I don't mess this up.

How should I consolidate my credit card debt? What about a signature loan?

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:58:29 -0800

FinancialFilter. I'm looking to consolidate credit card debt and am not sure what my options are. Advice?

I owe about $13,000 on four credit cards (14.9% - 19.9% APR), and about $35,000 on a consolidated student loan (4.5% APR). I've had a checking account with my current bank for over four years, but no savings account. I'm employed full-time, would be willing to close all but one of my credit card accounts when paid off, and although I don't know what my credit rating is, I know it's got to be pretty good. Oh, and I'm female, over thirty, if that matters.

What kind of APR could I expect from a signature loan? Is a signature loan a good idea? Should I leave my student loan as is?