American Student Loan Query

thebottomline

Hello,

I've looked far and wide on this so I've come to where I probably should have just come first to ask the resident experts!

My Wife is American, as I met her over there a few years ago, and we decided to retain residence in the UK as it was best for both of us. However we're having trouble paying off her American Student Loans - not from a financial perspective (despite the rates being relatively extortionate compared to the UK's), but more from an administrative perspective.

The Student Loan firms won't accept direct bank transfers from UK Banks, claiming they are not "set up" to do so. After going round the houses speaking to various people, my wife had to set up a Steling and a Dollar CitiBank account, where she would deposit in sterling, convert to the Dollar account, and then post cheques from the Dollar account - far from ideal, and the companies have claimed to have not received the cheques on more than one occasion.

In addition to this is the fact that, while we can afford to pay them off at their current rate (which are generally set to pay off in 10 years of less), we'd rather a slower pay-off to increase our monthly disposable and live a little more.

So my question is two fold - are there any UK Based companies who would consolidate American Student Loans, to help us pay it off in a simpler way, and pay it off longer than 10 years? It's a considerable expenditure each month that we'd love to reduce to start putting more money away in Savings.

As always, any help is much appreciated, thank you.

jonesMUFCforever

In one word - no.
If you have a USD dollar account - send money electronically rather than by cheque.

iolanthe07

Or you could try sending them dollar Traveller's Cheques. I did this to pay an insurance premium after I moved back here from California. They went astray once, but American Express paid compensation almost immediately.