Tag Archives: reduction
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.
Debt Reductions Companies in Canada – Do Your Due Diligence
When making a big ticket purchase like a vehicle, you do your research right? You check the history of the vehicle, ensure it has not been in accidents, learn about the ownership, check the maintenance record for the vehicle and more. Your personal finances are no different and if you are in financial trouble, before choosing a company to help you, you really should do the same kind of research.
“The banks are offering a program that’s about to run out” or “time is running out on Federal Government Programs”; sound familiar? Debt reduction companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising per/year to sell you on this message. The question is; is it true? And do they “really” help? Is there really a program that all of the banks collaborated on and is time running out? Is it true that the Federal Government programs that help Canadians get out of debt could end in the near future? And what do they do anyway? Let’s get to the bottom of it.
First of all; all of the banks have not gotten together to offer a debt reduction program, hence time is not running out; because it simply isn’t true. The only Federal Government programs that help Canadians deal with debt are administered under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA). The Federal Government has made no announcement that there is a plan to eliminate the BIA legislation and there is no other Federal Government program that we are aware of that helps Canadians get immediate, legislated, debt relief. Seeking debt relief under the BIA does not mean that you have to go bankrupt and Federal Government programs are a viable means to get out of debt when a financial crisis emerges. The BIA offers different remedies to deal with debt, but the principal program offered by debt reduction companies doesn’t even involve relief under the BIA.
Debt reduction companies collect money from you on a monthly basis over a period of years with a promise that in the future they will settle your debt. By way of contrast, debt consulting companies represent you and provide you with a range of options to deal with debt that could include a consolidation or even enrolment in a credit counselling or Federal Government program. Debt reduction companies have one primary goal and that is to collect your money on a monthly basis. This is where the money that they use to advertise to you comes from. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) recently issued a consumer alert about debt reduction companies; you can view the alert here http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?nid=649969.
Before you deal with a debt reduction company, do your due diligence. While writing this article we took some simple steps that any consumer who has access to a computer can take to research a company; the results really scared us.
We visited the first debt reduction company’s website and there were many red flags. First, there wasn’t any information about the company’s ownership. Are they Canadian? American? Who is their president and what does he or she stand for. The company publishes no information about their ownership whatsoever. Red flag 1!
We Googled “who owns [company name]” and nothing came up. Red flag 2!
We went to Linkedin and ran a search by company name to see how many professionals on Linkedin are employees of the debt reduction company. The only profile that came up was an individual page branded for the company – not one employee and not a single name of anyone associated with this company emerged as a result. You would expect that a company that bills itself as a national provider of debt reduction services would have at least one employee with a profile on Linkedin; the world’s largest professional networking site. We would liken this to you not knowing a single person who has a Facebook account. Red flag 3!
Finally, we searched “[company name] reviews” and on the first 3 pages of Google we found no less than 6 pages by companies who represent people and individuals themselves who reported very serious claims about this debt reduction company. Red Flag 4!
Don’t believe everything you hear! Ads are paid for by the advertisers, companies pay the BBB to be members and any company who doesn’t wilfully and publicly provide information about their corporate structure and ownership, may not be a company you should commit to paying hundreds of dollars per/month for years to come. When it comes to debt reduction companies do your due diligence.