@Anonymous wrote:Anyone have any experience with them? Any issues?
After my discharge last year I got a lot of mailings from them, the interest rates were always high, and by that I mean like "Pay-Day Loan" high.
@Anonymous wrote:Anyone have any experience with them? Any issues?
They've been talked about a lot on this forum. I did a search for you:
My last loan with them:
LOAN TERMS
| Original Loan Amount: | $14,650 |
| Loan term: | 36 months |
| Interest rate: | 6.46% |
| APR: | 9.54% |
Notice the high APR due to their mostly high fees. It worked for me though, because it was the last time in my life I carried high interest on a CC. My credit score at the time was 807 via Transunion. I do think their rates can be pretty high if your credit scores are not at least 700+.
@Anonymous wrote:
@LakeLife wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Anyone have any experience with them? Any issues?
They've been talked about a lot on this forum. I did a search for you:
My last loan with them:
LOAN TERMS
Original Loan Amount: $14,650 Loan term: 36 months Interest rate: 6.46% APR: 9.54%
Notice the high APR due to their mostly high fees. It worked for me though, because it was the last time in my life I carried high interest on a CC. My credit score at the time was 807 via Transunion. I do think their rates can be pretty high if your credit scores are not at least 700+.
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I actually did a search before I posted but not sure why I didn't get the results you got. Thank you for that.
My credit is still in the dumps. 630 or so. I'm roughly 2 years out from my DC. No missed payments. Just high balances. I actually paid everything off recently and will now play the CC game correctly to get my credit score up. So I need to get a loan of some sort to add to my history.
I got approved through LC for $5400. It's low but I'm fine with that. Interest rate is 30.74% and APR 34.08%. So pretty bad. I only plan on keeping it for roughly 6 months. So after all is said and done I'll end up paying roughly $540 for the loan. Which is fine. I'll see where I'm at then and figure out my next move.
Join PenFed and take out a Secured Share Loan, the interest rate is something like 2.09%.
@Anonymous wrote:
What is a "secured shared loan"? I can't find anything on their website about it.
They don't list it on their website. Call them and talk to a CSR, the folks I talked with were very polite and knowledgeable on the subject and helpful when it came time to execute the loan. The basic rules/process is this:
- Open a savings account with at least a $5.00 deposit; this makes you an official member of the credit union.
- Deposit the amount you want to use as security against your loan.
- Let your deposit "age" for 30 days.
- Call PenFed and ask for a Secured Share Loan, tell them the amount you want the loan for, and the term in months.
- The check will arrive in your mail a few days later; cash the check and do with it what you will.
- Pay the loan down either on the established schedule, or accelerate the payments (which pushes the next due date out into the future), and ride the point gain for the duration.
In my case:
- I deposited $3,000 in mid-March 2021, let it age, opened the loan in mid-April; the first scheduled due date was about a month later.
- Two weeks after initiating the loan, I paid $500, and the next due date auto-adjusted to mid-November 2021.
- In mid-May, I paid another $500, and the next due date auto-adjusted to mid-May 2022.
One final comment, as the percentage of the loan still outstanding drops, the point gain you get in your FICO scores goes up; once you get the loan down to under 9% you get the maximum amount of FICO points. In my case, since I don't need maximum FICO scores until roughly this time next year, I've accelerated the payments, but opted not to do a bulk $2,750(ish) all in one swell foop.