Tag Archives: interest rate
Personal Secured Loans – What to watch out for
Obtaining a secured loan on your home can indeed save you a lot of money by helping you consolidate debt or paying off your credit card debt. Before jumping and signing loan documents, be sure to watch out for personal loan ripoffs that can lead to more expensive loans or even losing your property. Below are things you should consider before signing loan documents
Personal Loan Interest Rates: The Interest rate determines how much money in installment payments you are going to pay, and the total cost of the loan. Few percentage points increase in interest rate can lead to thousands in additional payments. Before settling on a secured loan, consider interest rate shopping to see if you can getter a better deal. Consider inquiring from about three to five lenders to see if you can save.
Before signing loan documents, READ the fine print. Sometimes we ignore those 20-30 pages but some lenders like to slip some terms and conditions in there. Most common is Early payment fees. Some lenders will penalize you for paying off the loan early. This can be frustrating.
Look out for PPI – Personal Payment Insurance: PPI is one way to make sure that your loan does not turn into a financial burden. Its optional and you may substitute disability insurance if you have any. This is however not calculated into the total cost of the loan. Thus your monthly payments may be more than listed on loan agreement. PPI is great but the cost can be extremely high. Sometimes lenders will bundle Personal Payment Insurance into the cost of the loan without informing consumers about it. If you absolutely need PPI,research other sources to find out if you can get the insurance at a cheaper rate. Do not feel obligated to take out PMI with the lender, you can get insurance from somewhere else.
Monthly payments are not the only factor to consider when calculating your loan. Additional costs such as PPI, loan closing fees and ledger fees should be added to the total cost of the loan.
Introductory rates can also be deceiving. We have seen reduced interest rates for 6 months! What happens after that? Do the payments increase in an attempt to bring the loan to term? Reduced interest payments may end up accumulating interest which in turn bears more interest.
Watch out for unsolicited offers. Research such companies and brokers. Some loan officers will get paid more if they sign you onto a high interest loan. Door to door marketers should also be avoided. A loan officer should not pressure you for an immediate decision. If he does, that raises a red flag. You should take time to discuss the loan documents with a qualified person. You should not at any time be forced to make an immediate decision. Most of the time a hurried decision leads to mistakes that can lead to hundreds in payment costs.Any company or broker that asks for a deposit/security is obviously a fraud.
Bank of America Loan Modification Modify Your Loan Today
If you are looking for a Bank of America loan modification, you need to read this article. These loan modifications are not as hard to get as you might think and they are definitely easier to get than most other lenders. So how much can you save off your monthly loan payments? You can find out today!
This program is pretty amazing. As Bank of America works towards getting all of Countrywides files merged over, they are also aggressively pursuing loan modifications for those who qualify. You may have seen in other stories how they actually doubled the amount of modifications they said they were going to do thus far, which is outstanding if you are in need.
Not everyone is going to qualify, let’s make that perfectly clear. They are not going to do a million loan mods every month! But, if you are struggling to make your payments and your interest rate is higher than average, you have a pretty good shot. There has to be a definite hardship though. If you are cruising along just fine and want to lower your payments or reduce your principal loan balance just because, it’s not going to happen.
This brings up a little side note I’d like to make as well. Everyone I talk to these days is concerned with getting a principal reduction. You hear things such as “Bob just got the same size house as me down the street for half the price, Im going to skip a payment and try to get a principal reduction!” This is a BAD idea. Why screw up your credit for a snowballs chance? If are struggling to make your payments, who cares about a principal reduction! You should be concerned with a payment reduction. This is accomplished by lowering the interest rates, lengthening the terms of the loan and then, maybe a principal reduction. If you lower the interest rate from 8% to 4.5% and extend the terms from 30 years to a 40 year loan, you are going to have a nice payment reduction. Hopefully, a payment you can afford.
So, back to the program. The deal with loan mods in the past has been you either gut it out yourself or hire a company and wait 2 to 3 months to get something accomplished. Now, you can use a company to find out if you are approved for a loan modification, what your interest rate will be and what your payment is going to be. Talk about a guarantee! All this is performed with no obligation to move forward, so if you don’t like the terms you don’t do it. Simple as that.
If you are looking for a Bank of America loan modification, just visit the site below and see if you qualify for this program.