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Archive for the ‘Credit score’ Category

Introduction.

With so many people struggling now to take out personal loans - it has been almost inevitable that some unscrupulous lenders would try to worm there way into the market. As the High Street banks become less inclined to offer loans especially to low credit score borrowers - the more people turn to online loans providers to get hold of the cash they so desperately need. For most people, most of the time, this is not a problem at all and there are many great offers out there to be had in online loans. However, if a personal loan provider wants to charge you an up-front loan fee before giving you any of the loan cash - you’re better off refusing them and seeking your loan from another online lender.

Bogus loan companies.

The idea is they lend you money - not you give them your money!

Even if you have the worst possible credit score imaginable, there really is no reason for a finance company to ask you to pay a fee up-front before deciding whether or not to offer you a loan. Any company that insists on you making a payment before giving you the cash should be treated as at best suspicious - if not a downright bogus loans company who have no intention at all of lending you any money. A typical scenario is for you to work through the application procedure only to find that before the company can process your application you have to pay an ‘administration fee’ of anything around $100 to well over $1000!

3 reasons not to pay an up front fee for a loan.

The simplest possible of reasons here is that there is no guarantee that having handed over your cash - that they’ll then agree to your loan request at all. The chances of you being ripped off like this are quite high from companies demanding up-front payments - it really is just a scam for them to get money from you. Second, OK so the company you’re borrowing money from wants to make a profit itself - fair enough they’re not a charity, but if they need you to pay them for a bit of administration in advance - then you really should worry as to whether they can afford to lend you the money in the first place. Third, even if a loan company says you’re a bad risk to lend money to - that’s no reason to get you to pay them for giving you a loan before you’ve seen the color of their money, they’ll soon enough recoup any expenditure they make through the interest rate they charge you anyway.

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Introduction.

Following months of uncertainty regarding the economy, the general consensus of opinion now seems to be that it is finally time to start buying again. We’re not talking here about things like electrical goods for the kitchen, furniture or TVs etc - but the bigger items that we tend only to buy when we think our jobs are secure, our finances are sound and the national economy is stable. Such bigger items are things like a new car or home, things most of will need to take out a loan for like an auto loan or a mortgage.

Are you ready to start buying again?

Having gone through an economically unstable period you’re probably one of the millions of American’s that haven’t been spending money of things that were not seen as essential. Instead, and rather than banking spare cash with the interest rates having been so poor, that was the time to pay off debts like credit cards and personal loans so that now the economic climate is brighter - you’re no longer saddled with those old debts and can start applying for new loans confident that your credit score is good. However, when starting to spend money again on big items - should you protect yourself against another downturn in the economy?

Protecting your new purchases.

Look for redundancy insurance cover online.

Let’s face it nothing could be worse than starting to pay for something like a new car only to lose your job, fall behind with the payments and end up having the auto repossessed. The solution to this is to take out redundancy cover on an auto loan or new mortgage - to make sure that if your job does fold your payments will be covered. When taking out redundancy cover do make sure the contract you sign is exactly what you need and take special care to check with your boss that your job is safe. The reason for this is that quite often redundancy cover insurance can be ruled invalid if, at the time of taking out the cover, your job was under threat. Also, be aware that mortgage redundancy cover will rarely pay off the whole mortgage if you should lose your job, but will more likely agree to pay your mortgage for a fixed period giving you breathing space to find a new job.

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Introduction.

We’re never afraid at “fntn.com” of advising anyone with a large amount of debt to destroy all but one of their credit cards. However, is that also good advice to give to people without any debt or those with a manageable level of debt? The past 12 months or so have seen millions of people see their credit limit on credit cards that they don’t use, or use infrequently, lowered. Why is that and what might it mean to you in the future?

Using credit cards and credit scores.

Don't use your credit card and your credit score could suffer!

It’s a simple matter of fact these days that if you have a credit card but don’t use it, the credit card company may well reduce the credit limit or even cancel it. If you have several credit cards this won’t be a massive inconvenience, you can simply use one of the other credit cards you possess. However, if that was the only credit card that you owned or if you then wanted to apply for another new credit card - the fact that you’ve had one cancelled, or even the credit limit reduced, could well go against you! How can cancelling a credit card or having the credit limit reduced go against you? Well, as far as the credit card company is concerned their logic works along the lines of - you’re not using our credit card because you can’t afford to repay any debts on it, for good measure they’ll then lower your credit score too.

Maintaining your good credit score.

It might well sound a ‘topsy turvy’ old world but these days, in that to maintain a good credit score, you need to be able to almost constantly prove to the credit agencies that you can repay debts without any problems. Needless to say, using and repaying credit card debts is one of the things they look at for that. So, an inactive or cancelled credit card can be interpreted as potential credit trouble - as outlined above. Although you need to keep tight track on what you’re spending on your credit cards; do use them regularly, not forgetting to regularly and on-time pay them off. Also, don’t forget to keep track of your FICO credit score, and that you’re entitled to a free credit score report once a year from each of the credit agencies.

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