Tag Archives: payments
Car Loan After Bankruptcy
A car loan after bankruptcy can be one of two things. It can be a great experience as part of a plan to help you rebuild your credit and get you back to a better financial standing, or it can be a giant problem and a way into more high interest debt. Even if you’re in a situation where you’re desperate for a vehicle, you can still try and make your experience become the first one.
Bankruptcy is supposed to be a new start. Sadly for many people after things are finalized they are left not knowing what to do next, and still in a nasty financial situation.
Before you start looking to get a car loan after bankruptcy I recommend building up your credit a bit if possible. There are two types of credit you’re going to want to have, installment and revolving. Installment payments are for things like loans, where as revolving is for things like credit cards.
Obviously in your situation getting a traditional unsecured credit card can be difficult. You do have the option, however, to get a secured credit card. You can usually find these at your current bank or credit union. You deposit a few hundred dollars into a savings account which will be used as security to secure your credit limit on your new card. After approximately a year you will be able to apply for an unsecured card. Make sure that the company you work with reports to the three major credit bureaus about your on time monthly payments so that you build positive credit history.
It is recommended that you wait six months to get a car loan after bankruptcy, not just to build up your credit a bit, but because most lenders won’t work with you before then, and the ones who will, will offer you an even higher interest rate than you’d be offered if you wait a while.
Even after six months to a year you will still be offered very high rates. This is because you are seen as a risky customer. You can try to offset this risk by offering your home, another vehicle, or high priced collectibles as collateral and you will have an easier time both finding a lender and getting a better interest rate. You can also make things easier by finding a cosigner if collateral isn’t an option for you, but you should be aware that if you fail to make your payments this person will be held responsible.
These high rates are generally considered worth the cost, not just because you need a vehicle, but because by paying these rates now and making your payments on time every month you build up a positive credit history and will be offered better rates in the future and generally have an easier time of things financially.
By being responsible and in control of your finances a car loan after bankruptcy can be part of a plan to get yourself back on track.
Student Loans Refinance
A student loans refinance can be a great way to make your loans more manageable, and hopefully get a lower interest rate.
When you first get financing for school you likely have little to no credit and are offered undesirable interest rates. After the years you spent in school, hopefully during that time having some employment and building credit, you are probably able to find lower interest rates. Your life before you went to college is probably also very different from your post school life. You have new employment, new living conditions, and new needs for your monthly payments.
A student loans refinance is where you finance again, you apply for a brand new loan and use that to pay of your original financing. People do this for many reasons, often to adjust their monthly payment amount and the length of time it will take to repay, but even if these are part of the plan, you should have a goal of finding a lower interest rate when looking for your new loan to save you money.
If you have multiple loans, as many do, you of course have the option of finding new deals for each of them, but more commonly people find one new source of funding, and pay off all their old obligations with that. This way you have the added benefit of one monthly payment.
It is important to keep in mind that for private student loans, from a bank, credit union, or online lender, this is a great option. However, for any federal funding you may have you want to keep those separate. You certainly have the option to do whatever you would like, but government programs offer much lower interest rates and more flexibility than private options that you will want to take advantage of. If you have multiple federal loans you can contact them about consolidating to one monthly payment quite easily, but you’ll want to keep that separate from your other payments.
This is really a straight forward process that should make the intimidating task of repaying these much simpler, and cheaper. A student loans refinance will help you make your monthly payments adjust to your post college life, instead of the other way around.