ST. LOUIS - Sept. 7, 2019 - PeppyWallet, an education site which offers actionable insight into student loan personal finance, released case study results on methods student loan borrowers can utilize to save on interest by reducing the interest rate on their student loans.

Student loan payments account for quite a chunk of an average student loan borrowers monthly expenses, and average out at around $393, and borrowers may reduce their interest rate by an additional 1% following techniques outlined below.

First method - Making automated payments

You can start off saving by signing up for the autopay feature for your student loan. Many private lenders and even federal loans can offer you a rate discount, or an ACH discount, which is typically 0.25% of your initial interest rate, if you sign up to have your monthly student loan payments automatically extracted from your bank account.

Second method - Asking for a loyalty discount

Many banks will not only offer you loyalty discounts, but some, like Citizens, will offer solid 0.25% rate discounts if a co-signer is a currently existing customer for certain bank products.

So far, if you're able to set up autopay and receive a loyalty discount, you've shaved off 0.5% from your interest rate. Using our refinancing calculator, if you have a loan balance of $40,000 and pay an average interest rate of 7% over the course of 10 years, if you receive the autopay benefit and loyalty discount for a total of 0.5% off your interest, your new interest rate would be 6.5% on that 10 year term loan. This would save you a whopping $1,200 in interest.

Third method - Paying your student loans on time

On top of offering an ACH and loyalty discount, some lenders may also offer another interest rate reduction of around 0.25%, if you also make several yearly on-time payments, typically for three or four years. Once you've set up autopay, this should keep you from missing payments accidentally, which will enable you to automatically qualify for an additionally 0.25% off your interest rate after three to four years, depending on the borrower's terms.

To view all 5 methods student loan borrowers can utilize to reduce their interest rate, view the complete results of the case study:

https://peppywallet.com/blog/5-ways-you-can-lower-your-student-loan-interest-rate/

Any references to refinancing savings were calculated using the student loan refinancing savings calculator which may be found at:

https://peppywallet.com/calculators/student-loan-refinancing-calculator

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