Leaving college and entering the workforce has much in common with an athlete finishing training and hitting the stadium for the start of a race. In this case it’s going to be a marathon, and that means a string of races within an overall event.

Borrow and Repay – a Simple Cycle

Dealing with sections in this way is key to a successful life, and one measure of success is financial. Here, your ranking is going to be in the form of a credit rating. It’s your track record, your history of borrowing and repaying, and the best way to view it is as a series of races, the first of which is the process of paying off a student loan. There is a time limit on this – the term of the loan – and targets within it. You are contracted to repay a certain amount each month, and if you stick to the schedule, you win that stage. But missing payments can result in financial penalties and the whole thing starts to cost you even more. Prompt repayment is the goal here.

The Art of Renegotiating

However, circumstances change and you may want to do some refinancing, changing the terms or size of payments. Your student loan refinance request may be due to your increased earning capacity, so you could be talking about paying it off quicker, or perhaps adding to it to buy a car. On the other hand, you could be struggling and therefore asking for an extension. If you have run a good race so far and your prospects are palpably improving because of a career that’s looking promising, the lender may agree to your request, because you’re looking like a good risk. Your credit score will tell them what they need to know.

Enlist Some Help

If the answer is no, all is not lost, as your lender ideally wants to keep clients, so they may suggest you get a co-signer. This is someone with a good track record who will agree to be jointly liable for the loan. Co-signers will often be family members who are regarded as solid citizens, as attested by their own credit rating, and although a co-signer can help you handle stress, if they agree to help you in this way, now you will have two obligations rather than one. As an alternative, you could look at a federal repayment program.

Build Relationships

Athletes often help one another out by one setting the desired pace and temporarily relieving the other of the pressure of leading, so if you need someone to assist in this way, they will have to see you are worth helping. When a jointly held loan is satisfactorily repaid, your credit score should have risen and you may be ready for another event, and this could be the real financial marathon: the mortgage. The relationship you have built with the lender may persuade them to let you have this much larger sum with its correspondingly longer period.

The Main Event and the Ultimate Threat

While a student loan involves something intangible – your education – a mortgage gives the lender the ultimate option of repossessing your house, which is a pretty good incentive for the borrower to play this one straight. It also gives the lender a degree of security, even if repossession is very much a last resort that no one wants to see. Clearly, it is best to run your financial races carefully.