Selflender.com

[moneystinks]

Anyone heard of them? It's kind of like a secured loan to yourself...was wondering what kind of impact it would have on your scores for a short installment loan 3-6 months? 

[Anonymous]

It really depends on how this is reported to the credit bureaus.

Probably better off going through a Credit Union such as SDFCU. The CU also lets you do secured credit cards as well.

[Anonymous]

http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/self-lender
They describe themselves as a 'consumer finance company'. Consumer Finance Loans, such as you get from a furniture store, are less helpful to building credit than genuine installment loans that you would get from a CU.

[Anonymous]

Also, another thing to think about is that with a CU secured installment loan, the money is free to use immediately, so say you have 500 dollars you are going to use to pay a bill, you could deposit it in the CU, borrow against it, and use the borrowed money to pay the bill. You can't do that with selflender, because the money is held up until the loan is payed off.
To me its just a gimmick and does not really do anything different or more useful than what a CU such as SDFCU would do.