Word: loan
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...critical issue. Mokhtar is a shrewd, self-made entrepreneur. "The man comes from the school of hard knocks. He wasn't an accountant who had everything handed to him on a silver platter like the others," says one close adviser. "His father was a cattle farmer. He took a loan from the government in the '70s to buy his own trucks to carry cattle from one state to the next to get a higher price. Then he started transporting rice in the same trucks and bought his own paddy fields to cut out the middleman. That...
...predicts that United Airlines, the second largest U.S. carrier, could still go the way of U.S. Airways, which announced last month that it plans to seek government loan guarantees. Just two weeks ago, Bethune announced that to boost revenues, Continental and U.S. Airways are discussing a code-sharing alliance that would allow passengers to book flights on one airline but travel on the other for part of the route. "Fact is, we're all losing money. At Continental, we're just losing less than everybody else," he says. "If we don't survive, no one is going to survive...
...there's some good news for those burdened with such obligations. On July 1, many will be able to refinance at a favorable rate. Federal student-loan rates are reset every year on that date, and this year, thanks to six interest-rate cuts in the past 12 months, they are expected to fall to a historic low of about 4%, nearly 2 percentage points below last year's level...
Here's the lowdown. Most students (and parents) who borrow to finance education using Stafford (and PLUS) loans emerge from school with a portfolio of loans, one for each year. They don't necessarily all come from the same lender, nor are they all at the same rate. The formula for Stafford loan interest--a variable rate computed each year--is the 91-day Treasury-bill rate set in the last auction each May, plus a factor. For student loans made between July 1, 1995, and June 30, 1998, that factor is 3.1 percentage points during the repayment period...
When you consolidate--the industry term for such refinancing--you roll your portfolio of variable-rate loans into one big fixed-rate loan; in other words, you "lock in." Your interest rate becomes the weighted average of your underlying loans rounded up to the nearest one-eighth of a percent. This means that by consolidating after July 1, when the rate on the 91-day T-bill is expected to be around the 1.7% it is today, it is likely you will have the opportunity to lock in at around...