Paying off student loans?

Hi there, I'm looking for a bit of advice-- I'm an American who went to college in the US, but has now permanently settled in Ireland (married & employed). My US student loan of approx. $8500 has gone into repayment (scheduled at 7.22% over 10 years, making the cost of the loan $11,804).

I'm wondering if it would make more sense, since the dollar is weak right now, to take out an Irish personal loan and pay off the whole dollar amount? BOI is offering me a rate of 8.7% over 5 years... I've found since living here that the procedures behind making monthly transfers from my Irish account to the US account are complicated and a pain-- and have often incurred bizarre fees (I'm still fighting a 40 euro fee I was charged to transfer 200 euro by Bank of Ireland!)

Since I'm going to be earning in euro for the forseeable future, does this make sense? Alternatively, if anyone knows of a way to make painless monthly transfers from an Irish to a US bank account that doesn't incur high fees, please enlighten me! I've had so many problems with this... thanks!!

I would recommend opening an Etrade Savings account which has no fee for incoming wire transfers from the EU. You should also open an XE.com currency exchange account to transfer money (to get the best rate on the foreign exchange transfer). Transfers to the xe.com account should be minimal from your Irish bank account (less than a euro). If you are unconfortable using XE.com, Ulster Bank has reasonable exchange rates and only charges 51 cent to wire money into an American account, though the exchange rates are not as good as xe unless transferring large sums. Using the xe.com will minimise your fees and you can use your ETrade account to set up an automatic payment to your student loan while earning 5.05% interest on the money standing in the account.

Hope this helps.

On the other hand a lot of people reckon that the dollar has now reached it's lowest value. It might not be a bad idea to pay it off with a new loan. That's if you don't have heavy penalties for paying it off early.

If you apply for your loan online you get a 1% discount ( I think !) with BOI.

I think you might find it less messy than constantly transferring to the US.

The charge for your previous transfer would be mostly American charges. BOI charge for such a transfer is approx €7.50 unless you requested same day value.