A debt consolidation loan makes it possible for an individual to pay off their other debts and make a single payment each month rather than multiple payments to each individual creditor. Basically, you apply for a single debt consolidation loan that can pay for each of your credit card or unsecured debts, use the money to pay the accounts in full, and then make one payment to the new debt consolidation loan.
There are several types of debt consolidation loans. Many college graduates will apply for a student consolidation loan to help with school loan repayment once they get out of school. It is much easier to manage and pay for a single school loan payment each month than it is to keep track of four, or six (or more!) smaller loans each month. Also, when you pay on student loans separately, each account is charging their own interest rates on the individual loan balances. Consolidating the school loans into a single, larger loan lets net graduates benefit from having a single interest rate on the balance instead of multiple rates.
Students can consolidate their federal student loans through a federally funded debt consolidation program, and can consolidate their privately funded college loans through a private debt consolidation program- but they cannot combine federally funded loans with privately funded loans. For students who have both types of loans, the best they can do is consolidate federal loans together into one loan, and then consolidate the privately funded loans into a separate loan. Instead of multiple loans, then, the student would have just two consolidated loans (one private and one federal).
Besides student debt consolidation loans, other uses include loans that help individuals consolidate excessive debt that has gotten to be more than they can handle. It's common for people to find themselves having too much debt to pay on time each month. It can be extremely easy to use credit cards when we don't have the money to pay for something- and even easier to take out a small loan to make an improvement on your home. Regardless of the reason for getting into excessive debt, many people find themselves drowning under a sea of debt.
One way to save money and improve a financial situation is to consolidate those debts into a more manageable, single monthly payment with one interest rate. Credit cards can charge outrageous interest rates that are sometimes as high as 15-20% or more, so when you send your monthly payment, the payment is eaten by finance charges- and your payments barely reducing your debt! In some cases, you can send a $100 payment per month to your credit card and on the next statement, you'll see that only $25 was applied to the debt! The rest was given to finance fee and interest rate thieves!
Debt consolidation loans make your monthly expenses easy to keep track of. You suddenly go from having several individual credit card payments and the personal loan payments to having a single, debt consolidation loan payment. Debt Consolidation loans can save you several thousand dollars over the long term between interest rates and other finance fee savings.
Keep in mind that most debt consolidation loans will not allow you to pay off secured loans, like vehicle loans or mortgages, but if you're looking to reduce the amount of money you pay to unsecured debts and you want to have a single monthly payment instead of multiple payments- a debt consolidation loan is a great solution to help save money.
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