Most college students graduate with student loan debt. When/if you get married, chances are both you and your spouse will still be paying off your student loans.  At some point, you may find yourself looking for ways to simplify your loan payments. Consolidation and refinancing are two popular ways to do this individually. But can you consolidate and refinance student loans with your spouse? And even if you can, should you?

Here’s what you should know about consolidating and refinancing your student loans with your spouse.

What You Should Know About Consolidating Student Loans With Your Spouse

Consolidation is offered by the federal government. It combines multiple student loans into one loan. Earlier, spouses could consolidate their federal student loans through the Joint Consolidation Loan program. However, unfortunately, this program is no longer available, which means spouses can’t consolidate their federal student loans together through any federal government program. You can still consolidate your own individual loans though.

If you want to combine your loans with your spouse, your only option is to refinance through a private lender.

What You Should Know About Refinancing Student Loans With Your Spouse

As of now only one lender, PenFed Credit Union, allows spouses to consolidate and refinance their loans together. This lets you and your spouse to combine your student loans into one easy to manage loan.

There are some compelling benefits to choosing this option. But there are a few major downsides too. Before you consolidate and refinance your student loans with your spouse, it helps to understand the pros and cons.

Pros:

• It could help you secure a lower interest rate: You and your spouse will likely have different credit scores. When you refinance together, lenders will usually use the higher credit score to set the new interest rate. This can mean extra savings for the spouse with the lower credit score.
• It will simplify your payments: Managing multiple loan payments and due dates between the two of you can get overwhelming. Refinancing can help you combine multiple loans into one so you have to keep track of just one due date.

Cons:

• You’ll lose federal loan protections: When you refinance your federal loans with a private lender, you lose access to all benefits associated with the original loan. If either one of you qualify for forgiveness, it’s better to keep your federal loans separate. The spouse who is not eligible can then refinance their loans separately.
• Finances can get messy: You never want to think it will happen but if you decide to part ways, the joint debt can be another point of contention.

Before you combine student loans together, it’s a good idea to discuss how you will handle various issues that are likely to crop up. Discuss your refinancing goals and how the monthly payments will be made. Also discuss which loans to refinance first and whether you may need to use your federal loan benefits. If you decide against auto-pay, decide who’s going to be responsible for the payments. Having an in-depth discussion on all matters related to the combined loan will prevent major misunderstandings down the road.