It probably comes as no surprise to you that the costs of going to a good college or university have been going through the roof in recent years. As a result, the majority of students have one or more student loans, with most students having more than one of them to cover all the costs each year.

As your graduation date draws near or shortly after graduation, you will suddenly come to the realization that you need to start making payments on those student loans. And if you haven’t been keeping track of them, you may be floored to realize the total amount of money you owe in student loans. Even with the lower interest rate that usually accompanies a student loan, paying them back may seem like an overwhelming task.

Consider a college loan consolidation loan to give you the financial breathing room that you need right now. This will help make that loan more manageable, and easier to fit into your limited budget. But first let’s look at what can happen if you elect to not get into a college loan consolidation program.

Say you have three student loans, and loan payments are going to be $200 a month on each of them. Right now, you have just started a new job at the bottom of the corporate totem pole, or maybe you are still looking for that job. You have rent to pay, you need to eat, your car runs but still requires gas, and the thought of having to pay an additional $600 a month to make payments on your student loans is all but out of the question.

So you can default on the loans, which may be your only option. But you need to know that doing so is going to leave a huge blemish on your credit report, which is going to negatively impact many other areas of your life. If you start getting blemishes on your credit report, it can take years for those to fall off and show you as a good credit risk again.

Have you thought about bankruptcy? If so, forget it. Student loans are not eligible to be discharged by filing bankruptcy. While bankruptcy may be helpful if you have multiple other bills, student loans are not discharged via bankruptcy.

Seriously consider a college loan consolidation program. What happens in such a program is that the consolidation company takes your student loans, and you make a payment to them each month, and then they make your student loan payments. As long as you pay them each month, your student loans are paid on time.

There are two major benefits to this for you. First is that your credit score and credit rating remain intact, since your student loans are being paid back in a timely manner. Secondly, that $600 per month that was the sum total of your student loan payments is reduced by the loan consolidation company to something that is more within your reach, say $400 per month.