Tag Archives: consolidate
Find a Consolidation Loan Program for Students
College students who are in need of paying for their education, student loans are a great source of financial aid. The problem is that students leave college with allot of debt. Also they usually have many loans from assorted lenders, which means they are paying back multiple loans each month. Loan Consolidation can be a great solution to this problem.
Loan consolidation will allow you to take all of your loans and put them into one loan and one payment. Think of it as refinancing a home mortgage. You consolidate all of your student loans together, and all of the balances of your existing school loans are paid off, the balance will go into one consolidated loan. The advantage to this is that you have only one student loan to pay off.
Consolidating your loans can offers many benefits such as, locking in a fixed, lower rate for the length of your loan. This is advantageous because it can save you allot of money over the term of the loan. Also you will incur smaller monthly payments, which will allow you to have more funds available for other things. Also these types of loans are very flexible with prepayment penalties, charges and no fees. It is important to understand that you will not need a credit check or a co-signer for this type of consolidated loan.
The only time you would not want to consolidate is if you are close to paying off your current loans. However, if you are having trouble making monthly payments and would like to take advantage of a lower interest rate, this can be a great thing for you.
The eligibility for this type of loan is, your loans are over $7500, you have more than one lender, you are in the grace period or have started repaying the loans, you have not already started a consolidation program.
Consolidate Maxed Out Credit Cards Using Your Home – Post-Holiday Spending Tips
During the holiday season many families will turn to credit cards to finance Christmas expenses. This makes it less stressful to make ends meet, especially during the holidays. Sometimes we don’t even realize how much damage is done until the credit card bills start to arrive in January.
Credit cards are very convenient but have their pitfalls. Credit cards bear very high interest rates, often more than 20% interest and in the case of department store cards up to 30%. Interest is calculated monthly so if you get caught up in a pattern of only making minimum monthly payments, they can take years to pay off. Credit cards that have balances more than 75% of their limits will damage your credit rating/credit score.
The last thing you want to do is go into the next holiday season with credit cards that have balances from the spending you did the past holiday season. The best thing to do if you have accumulated balances on credit cards from holiday spending is to consolidate maxed out credit cards using your home.
There are many reasons why it is a great idea to consolidate maxed out credit cards using your home. Here are just a few:
1. Using your home to consolidate maxed out credit cards will enable you to start the New Year on a fresh foot and with a single monthly payment.
2. Using your home to consolidate maxed out credit cards will increase cash flow because a home equity loan or line of credit will bear a much lesser payment than what you are paying to your credit cards on a monthly basis.
3. Using your home to consolidate maxed out credit cards will reduce the overall interest that you are paying to loans and credit cards. Home equity loan and home equity line of credit interest rates are much less than what you are paying to your individual credit cards.
4. Using your home to consolidate debt will improve your credit because all of your credit card balances will be reduced to zero and the less debt reporting to your credit report, the higher your credit score will be. Also, as we mentioned when credit card balances exceed 75% of your limits, it reduces your credit score and will trigger a message to appear on your credit report that indicates that your credit card balances are too high in proportion to your credit limits.
It is important that if you consolidate your maxed out credit cards using your home equity that you don’t continue to use your credit cards. Put them away and only use a single card and make sure to use the card in denominations that you can afford to pay off in full each month. This will ensure that you don’t find yourself in the future with a new payment on a consolidation loan and paying credit card balances.
Start your New Year off with your finances in order and without the stress of having to pay a windfall of credit bills.