Posts Tagged ‘High Interest’

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Consolidate Credit Card Debt and Eliminate Debt With a Home Equity Loan

December 21st, 2009

National surveys shows that in average American households carry a credit card balance of approximately $10,000. Many find that it hard to reduce their debts especially credit card debts due to it high financial charge, interest rolled from month to month because most of them just pay the minimum payment each month, causing their debt snowballing and at last they may trap into financial crisis.

While bankruptcy is a tempting option, it is important to explore other alternatives for eliminating debts. Debt settlement with a debt consolidation loan is a better option that bankruptcy. And if you own a home, you are at a much better position to get rid of your debt by consolidating your high interest credit card debt with a home equity loan.

Benefits of a Debt Consolidation Loan

Although a debt consolidation loan is not a magic way to eliminate your debts overnight, but it can help you to reduce your debt faster. As you know, credit card debts and other personal loans are high interest debts. In most cases, your minimum payment barely covers the interest incur by these high interest debts. Hence, you find it difficult to reduce these high interest debt’s balance if your are paying just the minimum payment.

If you lump all your credit cards debts and other personal loans into a consolidation loan, you can take advantage of lower interest rates and lower monthly payments offered by a consolidation loan. This enables you to enjoy debt free with a few years.

Conslidate Debts With Home Equity Loan

There are various ways to obtain debt consolidation loan. You could apply for personal loan or any unsecured loan with reasonable and lower interest rate as compare to your current debt’s interest rate and consolidate your debts into this loan. But, to obtain an unsecured loan, you need to have a good credit score else you loan application most probably will be rejected.

The best way to consolidate your credit card debts or any other high interest debts is using a home equity loan. Of cause, you need to own a home in order to apply for a home equity loan. Home equity is ideal for you to consolidate your credit card debts because the interest is much lower interest rate than credit card and other unsecured loan. And the best part is it normaly have different terms or repayment periods for you to choose from. The longer the repayment terms, the lower the monthly payment is. If your current financial is tight, you could choose the longer repayment term and pay more when you are at better financial situation.

With a home equity loan, your equity works as the collateral. If your home equity is $50,000, you could obtain a loan up to this amount. You could use this home equity loan to clear up all your credit card balances plus other loans; and you just need to focus on making a single monthly payment to your home equity loan.

Some Caution On Using Home Equity Loan To Consolidate Your Debts

Although consolidate all your credit card debts with a home equity loan is an ideal way to settle your high interest rate outstanding debt. You should use the fund wise, borrow just what need to clear your consolidated debts and avoid accumulating new debts while working on clearing your home equity loan. Failure to repay a home equity loan will result in losing your home.

In Summary

If you intend to pay off your debts, consolidating all your debts and pay them off with a home equity loan is a good option. There are tax advantages with a home equity loan and you could also take the advantages of lower interest rates and lower monthly payments offered by a home equity loan.

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Is a Home Equity Loan a Wise Decision?

December 20th, 2009

When the month continues to live on well after the money is spent, a very logical approach is to utilize the equity in your home to alleviate the pressure. But is this a good idea or a bad one? Take a look.

Consolidating may free up your dollars, but at what cost? Usually consolidating debt only prolongs the agony. Clearly it ends up creating a far greater cost because the time to pay a debt off is increase, which also means far greater compound interest applied to the debt.

But more than this, clients should be asking themselves what caused this problem in the first place. If no corrective action is taken, all that will have been accomplished is creating a set of circumstances destined to end in financial disaster as the client get further and further into debt.

When using the equity in your home to pay off high interest cards, the alluring feature is oft times a lower interest rate. If I am paying 19% interest on a credit card, a 12 % home equity is certainly appealing. But consider this. You are taking unsecured debt (i. e. credit card debt) and converting that unsecured debt into debt secured by your home… a very dubious financial maneuver. With a secured debt if you default on your payment, a higher interest rate may be the least of your problems. Now you could loose your home!

But there is another method worth considering. A Debt Management Program (DMP) through a proven debt-counseling agency could be a viable alternative especially if initiated at the first signs of trouble. Instead of taking out a new loan, a DMP sets up creditor a program that allows repayment at a lower rate. (See Results to see what your DMP program will look like. )

This should be a no-brainer though picking the right agency may take some investigation. Most agencies do not mention that they do not establish the payback formula as suggested at the above link. It is the same regardless of which agency you use. So there is simply no mystery involved as to what any agency can do for you.

The difference in agency is how flexible are they in meeting your needs, their track record and their procedural follow through. As a consumer, I would question or research each category beforehand.

1. Ask them specifically how flexible they are working with a client. Insure they offer very specific examples.

2. What is their success rate? Does the Better Business Bureau have numerous complaints about them? Has anyone you trust referenced them to you?

3. Ask the perspective agency about their procedures:

a. How often are checks dispersed? (It should be daily but routinely it is only every 2 weeks. )

b. If a creditor does not respond to a DMP proposal, how soon does the client follow-up?

c. Are billing dates adjusted so as not to create a late status?

One other area to be considered is simply how comfortable are you with the perspective agency? Does their proposal make sense to you? Are you more likely to come out further ahead with a home-equity loan or a debt management program?

Readers will probably be interested to know Mike, the author of this article, also offers a free debt elimination mini-course via e-mail. You can enroll at Debt Free In 7. 5 Years.

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Bad Credit Home Equity Loans – for Adverse Circumstances

December 17th, 2009

 
Now that market price of your home has substantially gone up and in the mean time you have repaid a larger part of the loan that you took to buy the dwelling place, you would like to explore it for extracting some finance from it, though you have a blemished credit history. In that case, bad credit home equity loans can provide you the finance for any purpose. You can release the equity for any purpose like paying for the child’s education, debt-consolidation, home improvements, wedding, holiday tour etc. however, the loan should be availed only when you need it the most, as this loan is also considered as your source in emergency situation.
 
These loans are based on equity in your home, meaning that you will be approved an amount that is arrived at by subtracting the remaining payments towards the home from its current market value. These loans are also referred to as a second mortgage. You are given a fixed amount, which typically is not more than 80 percent of the equity in your home. Then, you are supposed to repay the loan in a fixed term, ranging from 10 to 30 years.
 
The loan is secured against your home. Because of collateral, bad credit borrowers can find the loan in an easy manner, despite late payments, arrears, defaults or CCJs in their names. However, you should be regularly repaying the loan installments without missing any. In case of payment default, your home may be repossessed by the lenders.
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It is prudent to compare the interest rate on home equity loans, as each lender has different rate. Because of collateral, generally the rate is kept low and is fixed for the life of the loan. However, avoid carrying the loan for a longer duration as you may end up making high interest payments.
 
Compare as many offers of bad credit home equity loans as you can on internet for finding it at competitive rates. You should also try to avoid the fees, since lenders have this habit of charging as much fee as possible. Instead, you should insist for waving them and you may have your way.

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