Credit Card Debt Consolidation: The Solution For You?
Learn what you need to know to judge correctly whether your current situation is suitable for debt consolidation or not
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In order to know whether your credit card debt is suitable for consolidation you need to gather some information. First of all, take note of all your credit card and store card balances as well as the APR charged for financing the balance. Also, add all other fees and charges applied to the balance as well as those charged even if the balance is zero.
By doing this you'll be able to include on a single sheet all your debt so you can compare them at a glance. With this info you will have an overall idea of how expensive each debt is in terms of interests and charges and you'll be able to compare it with the consolidation loan quotes that you'll need to request next in order to continue with the comparative process.
Requesting Loan Quotes From Different Lenders
You can start with online lenders which are very accessible. Just make a quick search on the net for debt consolidation loan and among the results you'll find many online lenders willing to offer free debt consolidation loan quotes. You can compare these offers and pick the one that best suits your needs.
But after comparing the loan quotes and picking up your best consolidation program, you need to compare it with your current outstanding debts to see how much money you would be saving by consolidating. In order to know this you can compare the APR but you should also watch closely the repayment program, because long repayment programs affect the overall interest amount paid because the APR is calculated annually regardless of the loan length.
Monthly Payments and Consolidation Convenience
There are mainly two reasons why you would decide to consolidate your debt when it is to your advantage: One is the situation when consolidating implies huge savings due to the lowering of the interest rate paid on your debt. This obviously implies that you need to finance your credit card balances and you can't pay them off right away because in that case you wouldn't need financing at all.
If by taking a debt consolidation loan and using the money to repay your credit card debt you end up with a single loan that cuts the amount of money you spend each month on interests and the period you chose for repaying the loan is similar to the time it would have taken you to repay your credit card debt, then and only then, you can conclude that consolidating is definitely to your advantage.
The other situation has nothing to do with savings. Actually you would be spending more money by the end of the loan period. However, by extending the time you have to repay your debt you are lowering the monthly payments that you couldn't otherwise afford thus risking your credit score if you defaulted on your credit card debt.
Credit Card Debt Consolidation: The Solution For You?