To consolidate or no? What credit score is necessary?

[smoothjk]

Hi all,

I had another thread about paying student loans off early, and I got a lot of excellent, helpful responses. But I need to weigh my options carefully and make sure I make the right choice for me.

Here's my situation:

I have two big student loans, and both are private. I basically lived off of them for years, in my boneheaded quest for independence from my parents (and in the process, ironically, lost my financial freedom).

The first one is about $50K, with a rate of 5.95% variable, and it has a 20-year term.
The second one is about $35K, with a rate of 7.3% variable, and it has a 15-year term.
The total monthly payment for both of them comes out to about $850. Ouch.

So, I looked into private student loan consolidation, and according to their calculations, the payment could be dropped to about $600-$650. Of course, the catch is that it would stretch it out to a 30-year loan. Furthermore, to qualify for a good rate and to avoid origination fees, my credit score needs to improve.

Assuming I successfully combat my baddies and my scores go above 700, do you think it'd be worth it to consolidate? What score would I even need to qualify for a good rate and avoid origination fees?

Or should I just suck it up, pay a couple hundred more, risk having the variable rates go up on me, and pay two bills -- and pay the loans off sooner with less total interest.

Please give me your advice! Thanks so much for reading all of that.

[smoothjk]

By the way, the way this plays into the other thread I posted is this:

The extra couple of hundred dollars saved by consolidating would be a pretty significant help RIGHT NOW, but hopefully in the future (when I'm earning a lot more money), I'll be in a better position to pay things off early.

So, consolidating would be a great short-term benefit and allow me to pay off my higher rate credit cards faster. In the long run, I'm hoping I'll have a lot more income to pay down my student loans faster, or I can just pay minimums -- and by then, $650 a month might not be too tough (with the higher income and inflation).

[smoothjk]

I did a lot of research, and on top of the fact that a lot of lenders aren't even offering private student loan consolidation anymore, the ones that do will probably end up having around 10% interest. That would reduce my payments from 850 to about 760, and spread it out 10 more years.

No thank you, I'll stick with my current loans and hope the rates don't get jacked up anytime soon.