SAHM Honest Experience refinancing student loans to Sofi

[busymom]

Okay, So I know that I am not the only one on this forum that has refinanced student loans over to SOFI, but I wanted to give my experience refinancing to them as a stay-at-home mom (SAHM). Both my husband and I refinanced to Sofi and applied the same day, but our experiences were a bit different.

First, I'll start off by describing my husband's experience. He is a senior software developer making 90K a year. He applied and was fully approved and funded in about a week. They have you submit a copy of identification, your 10-day payoff information for your loans, and a recent paystub. He refinanced two student loans that were 6.55% and the rate he got on a fixed 5-year term was 4.74% (after a .25% discount for using auto-pay). His experience went very smoothly and was very easy. He has an excellent credit score and aside from our mortgage, we only have student loan debt.

Now, to my experience as a SAHM. As I stated earlier, I applied the same day as him. However, as a SAHM, I have no paystubs showing any personal income. I contacted SOFI about this, and they said that I could have a co-signer, so my husband served as my co-signer on the loan (we share all of our finances, and although he is the one that brings home the paycheck, I am the one that primarily manages everything). My husband filled out the co-signer information the same day as I applied for my loan (which was also the same day as he applied for his). My application sat there with out being approved for several weeks. I contacted them every couple of days to try to push things along, but this didn't seem to help any. My husband even had to re-submit his paystubs because they have to be dated within the last 30 days, and the processes itself took longer than that for me. That was pretty frustrating. They said they normally are approved in 24-72 hours (as my husband's was), so I can only assume mine took (in the end) over a month to approve is because I had a cosigner. I also refinanced two student loans that were at 6.55% and I also got the same rate and term as my husband. I also have excellent credit.

So in the end, the point of this is---if you are a stay at home parent, or non-income earning spouse or whatever---it is possible that you can still refinance through SOFI by using a cosigner. I was able to. Just be patient and check in with them periodically to see if they are needing anything from you.

Also, if you are in a sitution like us where you are paying off student loans very, very quickly--their variable interest rates may be the way to go for you. They are even lower than the fixed rates. We would have gone with that option, but I guess it isn't allowed in our state (Minnesota) due to state laws/reguations.

I hope you find this information helpful!

If you decide to refinance through them, I would appreciate it greatly if you would use my referral link below:
www.sofi.com/refer/4/11827

You will get $100 and I will get $300 if you use this link when you apply.

I would be happy to answer anyone's questions about SOFI, or would love to hear about other experiences.

[SoCal Spartan]

It's even more of a hassle if you own your own business.

Had to go through the same procedure you outlined with pay stubs and whatnot, but also had to submit 6 different tax forms dating back to 2013 along with earnings and deficit reports for 2015 (This was late January 2015 when I was applying). Oh, and I was notified I needed to submit these additional forms after waiting 3 weeks to get an initial response... after calling twice and supposedly being put on their "expedited list."

In the end, their poor customer service and never-ending gauntlet of income verification and form requests turned me off to them. I guess they prefer employees over employers as customers. Or at least make it a lot easier for them to refinance.

[busymom]

Thanks for sharing your experience as a business owner, SoCal. That sounds even more frustrating than what I had to deal with! It seems that business owners have to go through so much more to get loans in general. My brother and sister-in-law own their own business and were recently trying to refinance their mortgage and they weren't approved---likely because of their business, not because of their actual cash flow. I suppose lenders see their income as more volatile that income from wages as an employee.

Your response reminded me that I forgot to mention--A few weeks after I applied for my student loan refinance, Sofi requested that I send them documentation of my recent (January) refinance of my mortgage. They must have found that on my credit report---but I found it a bit strange that they wanted documentation of that. I suppose they were checking my available cash flow or something. Not sure. But I was still approved in the end, so I was happy about that.

[busymom]

Has anyone refinanced their mortgage with Sofi? If so, what interest rate did you get? how did it go? Just curious.