If you are thinking of taking up one of the many offers that you see on the television or in the daily newspapers. Offering to give you a personal loan that will consolidate your debt into one manageable monthly payment, then before you take them up on their offer, sit down and think it through. This is because they are not as super and as painless as they would like you to believe.
Most of us when it comes to special deals will have a natural thought process of saying that there must be a catch. Though with the consolidation loans, many seem to have a blind spot and only look at the loan amount column and the monthly payment column.
This is the trick that the loan companies only want us to see, as by putting it in as straight forward as this means that we only look at the payments, to decide that we can afford to pay this amount back. Due to it being less than what we are paying in total, to our individual debts.
By paying back the consolidation loan, we will look upon it as paying back the monthly repayments easier. Though what we fail to see past is the other trick that the loan company will install, in the look of the loan and that is the timescale in which you have to pay the loan back. By putting the payments against the amount of months that you have to pay the loan, many will feel that the term of the loan is not too bad. But the simple fact of the matter is that if you are paying the loan for 60 months, therefore simple arithmetic of 60 payments.
What you really must do is put it into years and your whole thinking will change and you may ask yourself, Do I really want to still have this debt 5 years down the line?
If the answer is still yes then maybe you should look at what this consolidation loan is going to cost you over the term of repayments and maybe your answer may not be so stead fast.
The interest rate on most of these loans is variable so can change from one year to the next. Ok they may go down but more than likely they will rise, so if you do go for a consolidation loan make sure that the interest rate, is lower than that of your current debts. With another must do is make sure that you work out if you could pay off your existing debts in under the period in which you are taking the loan out for, then do so.
If you cant then the idea of having all of your other debts cleared in one fell swoop, is appealing, but comes with a word of warning.
DO NOT in any circumstances use the credit cards or store cards that you have cleared, as this will only mean that you will build up more debt, sinking you further into a financial swamp that you may find you cant get out of this time.
Peter Kenny is a writer for creditcards-gb.co.uk.
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