Do you sit down at the end of the month only to stress about the shear number of bills you have? Are most of your bills in the form of credit card payments or other debt obligations? Are you noticing that your interest rates vary for each different debt.? Would you like to potentially save money? Would you benefit by having all of your debt on one single account and by having only one bill to pay? If you answered, yes, to any of these questions, then a debt consolidation loan might be for you. Find out exactly what a debt consolidation loan is in this article.
A debt consolidation loan is a type of loan that takes all of your debt and consolidates it into a single loan. The main advantage is that you have only a single payment to make towards your debt each month. If you've had student loans and have consolidated them into a single consolidation loan, then you know the benefit already. However, there are a couple different types of consolidation loans that you need to consider. These are secured and unsecured consolidation loans.
Secured consolidation loans are loans that you put up collateral for such as real estate. There are several advantages of a secured consolidation loan over an unsecured consolidation loan. The main advantages include having generally lower interest rates, lower monthly payments and overall better loan terms. The major disadvantage is that if you default on your loan, you will lose whatever you put up as collateral.
The second type of debt consolidation loan is an unsecured loan that puts all of your debt into a single loan. While these generally have higher interest rates and less favorable loan terms than a secured loan, if you have no assets or are afraid of losing your real property, then the unsecured loan might be for you.
Remember, taking out a debt consolidation loan should not be a used to overcome poor debt management skills. If you are having serious financial trouble because of your debt, then you need to seek professional debt counseling in order to find more long-term solutions such as learning how to manage your money and your credit. If you don't learn to manage your credit and money and minimize your debt, a consolidation loan will not help you in the long run. In fact, a consolidation loan has the potential to make your debt situation worse if you are not practicing good management skills.
About the Author
For more ways on how to save money and manage your debt, go to http://www.creditmanagement101.com The author runs http://www.creditmanagement101.com - a website dedicated to issues concerning debt and credit management. Learn about responsible credit management, your credit score, debt management plans and credit counseling. Also find ways to save your money by maintaining a livable budget that reflects your means.
An Emergency Fund in Action: Our $500 Weekend
Direct your browser to just about any personal finance blog, and you’ll be able to find at least one post about emergency funds: why you should have one, how to build it, when you should start, and exactly how much (or how little) you should sock away. What I don’t see a lot of is emergency funds being used for, you know, emergencies. (A planned car purchase is not an emergency.) Maybe they don’t have many emergencies, or perhaps personal finance bloggers aren’t willing to admit it when their warranties expire. Whatever. Here’s some real life for you.Since the day we bought this house, the to-do list has included replacement of the basement door. It’s warped and in sad shape. The jam is a little rotten, and it lets in water during really heavy rain. Still, it opens and closes and behaves in a sufficiently door-like manner that we weren’t all THAT worried about it, until today. Today, that basement door went from a “to-do” to a “to-do now“. You see, Friday night, Boo (the resident cat and benevolent overlord) caught a mouse.For Boo, this isn’t a particularly unusual act. She’s a retired member of a hardware store extermination team, and it probably felt pretty good to shake the dust off the old stalk-n-pounce skills. She is a master mouser. For us, this isn’t so good. Nobody wants mice in their house. It’s just… oooky. *shivers*Dani did some research, and we poked around our basement, and decided that the first important step was to either fix or replace the back door to eliminate the wide gap at the bottom (and the ham-handed repairs of the previous owner). If you have mice, it seems, the first step to eliminating them is to cut off their points of entry. If you have any sort of holes in your house, it’s recommended that you stuff them with steel wool — apparently, mice don’t like the texture, so they won’t chew through it. Mice can enter the house through any hole larger than a US dime — like the yawning gap under our basement door.
Protect yourself against identity theft09Apr08
Identity theft is when someone uses, without permission, your personal information in order to commit any frauds or crimes. Identity theft is a felony that is becoming more and more common. That is because some of us are not very careful with personal information, making the job easier for those trying to steel our identity. We should always be careful with information like Social Security number, credit card number, birth date, employment information, driver’s license number, etc., because if they enter into the wrong hands the consequences can be very serious. People that have experienced identity theft spend months trying to repair what others have damaged, and in the meantime they cannot get a loan or lose a job opportunity or, sometimes, they can get arrested for something they didn’t do.
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1 comments:
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Susan
http://www.car-insurance-choices.com
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