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Cosigning your student loan may be the ultimate favor. According to the U.S. Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, more than 90% of new private student loans are cosigned, typically by a parent or grandparent.

But if you think you're ready to release cosigner, know that every lender has its own rules for releasing doing so. If you’re the borrower, reach out to the lender and get information about what it takes release a cosigner, as well as a release form.

Did you know that Americans now owe more than $1.48 trillion in student loan debt, with 2016 graduates owing an average of $37,172?

If you're part of that statistic, you may have heard that refinancing your student loans can be a smart way to pay off your loans faster and save money. In fact, refinancing can save borrowers an average of more than $15,000 over the life of their loan. 

Got a private student loan through SunTrust? Did you know you can refinance that loan—and potentially score a lower interest rate? You absolutely can.

If you refinance your SunTrust loan and you've already graduated, you have to pick a new lender. That's because SunTrust doesn't offer refinancing, unless you're applying for a new student loan with Suntrust and you want to roll previous student loan balances into your new loan.

Though student debt can sometimes feel like an ever-present shadow, knowing exactly how much debt you have doesn't always come easy.

Luckily, you have a few avenues for accurately determining how much you owe in student loans:

1. Downloading your credit report.
2. Logging into the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), or
3. Contacting your lender (or lenders plural, as the case may be). 

Downloading your credit report is the easiest way to get a full picture of what you owe, especially if you have both private and public student loans. But each option has its merits, so let's dive in.

If you have more than one student loan, you may have considered consolidating them to simplify your monthly payments.

But what does consolidation mean, exactly? Is it the same as refinancing? The fast answer: Student loan consolidation allows you to take multiple monthly student loan payments and join them together. Student loan refinancing is when you take out an entirely new loan to pay off your existing student loans.

The tax bill that was signed into law in December 2017 very nearly included a number of provisions that would have been disastrous for both current and former student loan borrowers — like eliminating the student loan interest deduction and tax-free tuition waivers for graduate students. Fortunately, most of the radical changes originally on the chopping block were rejected. 

So what do you need to know about how the new tax bill impacts student loans? The quick summary is this: Not a whole lot has changed and there's at least one positive addition — removing tax liability from discharged student loans in the case of death or disability — that will make paying back student loans just a little bit easier.