 TITLE: What Are the Current Interest Rates on Student Loans? CONTENT: Loan Terms Affect the Amount of Interest Paid\n---------------------------------------------\nEven when your student loan's interest rate is fixed and super low, it will still cost you plenty in financing fees if the term is long.\nImagine you borrowed a grand total of $50,000, and the average interest rate is 5.95%. If you paid the loan off within 10 years—the normal repayment term for a federal direct loan—with monthly payments of $554, the total interest you would pay is $16,462! Yet if you were to delete it in five years (and increase the payments to $966), the interest paid would be $7,929. That's still a lot, but not as expensive as the first option.\nTherefore, before you agree to only send the bare minimum payments, play around with the numbers and see if you can increase the payments on a regular basis. END