[Blog Main Page]  [Log in]  [RSS]                           

If you are struggling with credit card debt, your home could be your savior. A home equity loan can help you pay off the expensive credit card debt. A home equity loan is a loan that is secured against the equity (the extent of ownership) you have in your home. Since the home equity loan interest is much lower than the credit card APRs, it makes a lot of sense to use home equity loans for paying off credit cards.

So, here is a 3-step guide on how to pay off credit card debt using home equity loan:
(read more…)

Home owners often resort to a loan modification when they fall behind on payments; a loan modification is viewed as a chance to ward off a foreclosure. But homeowners also need to consider the effect a loan modification will have on their credit score. Indeed, most home owners do and are worried that a loan modification may have an adverse impact on their credit score.

In an ideal situation, if you are up to date with your payments there is no reason why a loan modification will hurt your credit score. A loan modification does not mean that you are borrowing; you are only adjusting your existing loan amount. You should not really have to worry about any adverse impact on your credit score. In fact, when you shift a loan to a smaller interest rate you free up some cash to pay off the principal, this can actually benefit your credit score. In rare cases, the lender may even pardon off a portion of the loan which reduces your loan liability and enables you to work towards bettering your credit profile.
(read more…)

Now, isn’t that a foolish question, you may ask. But you’d be surprised at how many people actually contemplate running away from their credit card debt. They figure that since it is an unsecured loan, there is no collateral that the credit card issuers have as guarantee and there is precious little a bank can do to get back the loan amount.

Many people do try to put this theory in practice thinking that it couldn’t be any worse than paying off the high-interest unsecured loan amount and this is where they go wrong. As you read the points below, remember that each of these can be irritants for you and all of them combined are guaranteed to cause you more grief than paying off your debts ever would.

Here are some ways in which your creditors can cause you pain if you try to ditch them:
(read more…)

Are you in a hurry to raise your credit score fast? Your credit score is nothing more than a mathematical formula actually. There are a lot of factors which can affect your credit score but there are also some ways to raise it fast.

There are several credit reporting firms and they can come up with a variety of credit scores depending on your creditworthiness. Therefore, don’t fret if you chance upon these varying rates. Here are a few important things to keep in mind on how to raise your credit score fast.
(read more…)

In what seems to be a parade of announcements, the latest news is the federal government has agreed to take on the burden of a vast majority of the $306 billion dollars in bad assets carried by Citigroup.

The merits of helping Citigroup are debatable, but what the development portends for the future is not.

Crash and burn. There is no other way to define the banking industry at the moment. Throw in insurance companies buried in credit derivatives like AIG and it is a full scale boondoggle. The government, largely led by Ben Bernanke who is an expert on the Great Depression of the 1930s, has been taking seriously proactive steps to cut off the failures. Despite their best efforts, the future looks grim.

Give some thought to how we got to this point. We started with the subprime mess. This then led to banks failing on loans to banks that were insured by credit derivatives. At one point or another, companies like Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual and so on bit the dust. Companies like AIG and Citigroup only survived because they were able to get in on the government handouts.
(read more…)

The recent financial crisis may have you feeling that you may never qualify for an unsecured loan again, but fortunately the government bailout has loosened the credit market to allow more borrowers to get the unsecured loans that they desperately need. Although market conditions are fluctuating slowly with each passing day, more and more lenders are gaining the confidence to begin writing unsecured loans that might have been nearly impossible to get just weeks ago.

Credit Freeze Is Melting

Unsecured loans are the least favorite loan among lenders due to the risk that is posed when the loan money to borrowers without having established collateral that backs up the loan in the case of default. For those with decent credit scores, getting an unsecured loan is again possible, although all borrowers can make their application more lender-friendly by dusting off their credit file to make sure they are in tip-top shape.
(read more…)