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Is this a good loan?

Submitted by on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 06:18
Posts: 202330
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My wife and I have 40k wrapped up in Credit Cards, all are at 29.9%. 3 are chase and 1 is Citi. We are paying about 1,600 a month on the cards alltogether. The bank offered us the following options.

1. Our local bank is offering a 48 month $30,000 personal unsecured loan at 5.9% variable and 6.9% fixed. They can only go up to 30K. Should we take the fixed or variable rate? Is this loan a good idea?

They are also offering to refinance our cars to finance the rest of the cc debt at 4.7% for 4 years. Should we do that or try to get the last one of our two CC companies to lower the rate before we accept the initial unsecured loan and pay it off ourselves? Would telling the CC companies that we have a loan offer to pay off 75% of our debt get them to lower their APR?

2. The second offer was interesting. They offered to take on all the CC debt including our mortgage about 90 K alltogether, which would basically mean we would refinance our mortgage because we have a lot more equity into our house now (all of the cc debt was for house improvements). They offered a 4.75% interest rate, which is about 2% lower than our current mortgage APR. It is also a 15 year mortgage, compared to the current thirty year one we took out 9 years ago, which would mean we would shave off 6 years from our mortgage rate and it would be cheaper as well with the lower interest payment.

Any suggestions?


First of all, I think that fixed rate is always the better option because if the market rate of interest moves up for some reason, you will not be affected. However, if the interest rate goes down, you will also not be able to enjoy the low rate.
Secondly, I think that going for 4.7% for 4 years would be a better option.


Submitted by on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 05:02

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One note of caution...is converting the CC debt into the home refi is that now you are taking unsecured debt and turning it into secured debt....make sure you are able to handle the 15 year mortgage amount...otherwise, it would be a shame if the mortgage is burdensome and you end up defaulting and lose your home.


Submitted by on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 09:01

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I would rap it all up into the first loan and take the fixed rate. It's a good trade off. It's an unsecured loan to payoff unsecured debt. I would then try to paydown the other 10K myself. Any other options would leave you in a bad situation if you ended up defaulting. I would touch the equity in your home. It's never a good idea to turn unsecured debt into a secured debt.


Submitted by sassy_lil_brandy on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 07:33

sassy_lil_brandy

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