Low Interest Debt Consolidation Loans – Educate Yourself Thoroughly

by Tracy Murray-Crouch

Human beings gravitate toward anything we perceive to be faster and easier. We like to simplify, streamline, and automate. It’s true of every aspect of our lives, and it’s especially true with how many of us want to deal with our outstanding debt. Many people who have multiple credit card balances, car payments, student loans, etc find it extremely appealing to have somebody else do the dirty work of dealing with our debt – so we go hunting for low interest debt consolidation loans.

On the surface, a low interest debt consolidation seems like it would be an absolute heaven-send. We get our ugly, disorganized high interest loans and their inconvenient payments turned into one smooth-sailing payment that we’re told is extremely low interest relative to what we’re paying now.

Here’s the problem – if you’re hunting for a debt consolidation with a low interest rate, it probably means you’re dealing with high interest rates – and several of them. You know what that means? It means you’re a credit risk. Somebody has to pay the piper, and your creditors aren’t just going to take massive losses just because your debt consolidation company asks them to. So while all the advertising may say that you’re going to be getting a killer low rate, read the fine print. You might be getting some kind of introductory rate and soon after it will be bumped up – sometimes as high as credit card rates.

Another thing I recently learned about these supposed debt consolidation loans with low interest is they often carry fees; fees that can run as high as 10% of the monthly payment on the consolidation loan. So if they get you to a $500 payment, you’re looking at $50 per month just for the privilege of having them receive a payment from you and then send it on to your creditors. By the way, they’re getting it on the other side as well. Your creditors, so excited to be receiving payments consistently, will often pay the consolidation provider an additional 10% to 15% fee. Suddenly it seems like this would be a good business to be in, but I’m not so sure it’s something where you want to be the client.

What you might not realize is that there are plenty of ways for you to take yourself through the exact same process that any company could as far as making your payments and paying your highest interest balances first. You’re very likely paying for something you could do yourself, and by doing it yourself you’d probably learn valuable lessons about how to avoid ever being in this kind of debt situation again.

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