You can consolidate your credit card, student loan, and other debts, but should you?

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Fewer debt buckets, and maybe a lower rate.

© ILYA AKINSHIN, 123object_stock, dreamsquares/stock.adobe.com; Photo illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

If you have several debts from different places, you might be going nuts trying to keep up with all the various payments and interest rates. Debt consolidation can help you combine your debts into more manageable chunks. With fewer payments—and potentially lower interest rates—you might be able to tackle your debt faster and save money overall.

Here’s a look at debt consolidation, consolidation loans, and what you can do to create more streamlined finances.

When you consolidate your debt, you combine multiple smaller loans into fewer obligations. One common way to do this is by using a debt consolidation loan and borrowing enough to pay off all your smaller debts. Now, instead of having a bunch of individual payments and multiple interest rates, you only have one loan with a single payment and interest rate.

To get a debt consolidation loan, you usually need to be able to qualify for a larger loan amount with a sufficient credit score and income.

For example, if you have three credit cards with different balances, as well as a personal loan, you might have a hard time keeping track of everything. Let’s say your debt is as follows:

Your total principal balance is $17,900. If you have good credit, a lender might approve you for a loan of $18,000 to consolidate your debt at 7.99% and pay it off over 48 months. You’d take that amount and use it to pay off all the smaller debts.

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Now, you have one loan for $18,000. Your payments are lower at $439 per month, and the total paid with interest ends up being $21,092. Your debt is paid off in close to the same time frame as before, but you’ll save more than $1,000 in interest. Plus, you only have one payment to worry about, and you’ve freed up $125 in your monthly budget.

Student loan consolidation is a bit different. If you have student loans, consider keeping them separate from your other debt. Federal student loans can be consolidated together. But if you consolidate federal loans with a personal loan or private student loan, you could lose access to benefits like student loan forgiveness and income-driven repayment.

Consider consolidating federal student loans with a Direct Consolidation Loan. If you still have private student loans, consider consolidating them separately as private loans.

Consolidating your student loans can make sense because most federal and private loans are issued individually on a yearly basis. So, after four years of undergraduate study, you might have four different federal loans and four different private loans (if you’ve taken both types each year).

You can still streamline your finances and improve your monthly budget by consolidating down to three payments: one for your consumer debt, one for your federal student loans, and one for your private student loans. That’s much more manageable than trying to keep track of more than 10 loan payments each month.

Here are some things to consider as you think about whether debt consolidation is the right move for your situation:

What’s the interest rate? Look at what kind of interest rate you’ll get. Is it lower than what you already have? In some cases, you might get a rate that’s lower than your credit cards, but not lower than your personal loan or car loan. In that case, you might consolidate your credit card debt to a lower rate but keep your other debts as they are.

If you can’t get a debt consolidation loan at a lower rate than any of your debt, it might make sense to look for other solutions, like using a debt snowball or debt avalanche strategy to tackle your debts.

Are you using collateral? In some cases, you might not be able to get approved for a debt consolidation loan without getting a secured loan. Many debt consolidation programs are unsecured, meaning you don’t need to provide something as collateral. However, to get a better rate, or a larger loan, you might need to secure the loan with something valuable, like the equity in your home.

Once you secure the loan, whether it’s with your house, car, or some other valuable item, it’s on the line. If you can’t make payments, you could lose what you value. Carefully consider whether you want to take the risk of turning unsecured debt like credit cards into debt secured by your home. You might decide it’s not worth it.

Do you have a plan to remain debt free? Finally, make sure you have a plan to stay out of debt. Once you consolidate credit card debt, you’ll “free up” all that new space on your old cards. It can be tempting to begin running up new balances once you have more credit available, trapping you in a debt cycle. Before you consolidate debt, make sure you have a budget and a plan to pay off credit cards each month instead of carrying balances.

Debt consolidation can be a useful way to manage your debt and streamline your finances. Plus, if you consolidate credit card debt, there’s a chance that you could improve your credit score by changing your credit utilization ratio. However, if you don’t approach debt consolidation with a plan, you could potentially wind up with even more debt down the road.

That’s the double-edged sword of debt: It can help you reach your goals, or it can take you further from them.