Personal Loan Opinions?

[Red_0023]

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place to post this but here I go. I had a few questions about personal loans. I've always wondered if they were a good a idea. I would like to see if I can get a personal loan to pay off some credit card debt (about 10-11k). I have some cards that have a high monthly payment and I feel that the interest overtakes the payment. Also how would this affect my credit score? Would my score go up if I pay off my cards with a personal loan? Thanks in Advance!

[FlaDude]

My opinion is that if you are paying high interest, and you have the financial discipline to not run the cards up again, moving the balances to a lower interest is a great idea. I was paying almost $1k/month just in interest, and using a combination of low interest rate loans and 0% balance transfer (BT) cards I am now paying under $200. This has made a huge improvement on my ability to make some headway against my debt. Moving debt to loans has also lowered my UTI and been one of the major factors in getting my FICO scores from around 700 to close to 800. 

[Turbobuick]

Personal unsecured loans with high credit card usage file probably won't be cheap. Still, the rate may be lower than your current cards. Be sure to see origination costs, early payoff, fixed or variable rate. Banks like to loan money to folks that don't need it.

You don't mention your income or debt ratio. Those are things a lender will want to know. Depending on what the loan costs you, it may be easier and/or cheaper to pay off the cards youself.  Good luck! 

[KLEXH25]

Are you a member of any credit unions? Many offer debt consolidation loans to pay off your credit cards, so you just pay the loan at a lower interest rate with one monthly payment. My SO did this. He had about $15k in CC debt, and was barely making any headway because of all the interest he was paying. Made things much simpler and it will all be paid off in a couple of years now.