Sometimes events occur that require cash that may not be immediately accessible, and for these situations, a short-term loan provides the best answer. If you only need the money for a few months, or even a year, it is not economically sound to finance a loan for two or three years. On the other hand, a short term loan has a great many advantages over taking a longer term loan, not the least of which is a lower loan cost overall.
Short term vs. longer term loan
If you find a situation that you can?t deal with right away financially and need extra funding, you want to look at the overall perspective before making a decision concerning financing. If the funds will be available in a year or less, and you can afford the financing for a short-term loan, economically that is the best choice. The analogy for making that choice is quite simple? the longer the term of a loan, the more interest that you are going to pay over the life of the loan. Not only that but some lenders adjust the interest rate according to the term of the loan, so if you take a short-term loan, you will pay a lower rate of interest than taking one for a longer term. Even if you finance it for longer and pay it off early, you will not recoup the difference in interest that you could have saved by financing it for a short term initially. Under no circumstances do you want to finance a loan for longer than you need unless the payments for the shorter term are going to make repayment difficult while the funds are pending.
Why you might need short term funds
Any number of reasons may create the need for a short-term loan, but one of the most common ones is during the holidays when you are either waiting for a Christmas bonus or to file for an income tax refund. Other reasons may be unexpected car or other emergency repairs that exceed the amount in your savings account. For these types of expenses a short term loan is much more economically sound than taking a long-term loan that will cost you more in interest over the life of the loan. Even if the interest is the same, a loan with a twelve-month term is going to cost less than a loan of twenty-four months because of the interest. Thus, it makes financial sense to finance a loan for any purpose for the shortest period that you can financially handle.
Making the decision about a loan
Weigh all of the factors before you decide whether you want to take a short term loan or a longer term loan, keeping in mind that the longer you finance a loan, the more it is going to cost you over the life of the loan. This holds true even for your home mortgage, so if you can afford payments on a loan for even eighteen months instead of twenty-four months, you will save six months? worth of interest. Always take the shortest repayment term that you can afford, even if it?s only six months, because although the difference in payments may not be much, the difference in the overall cost of the loan may be quite substantial.
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