
There are not many things in life that are more stressful than financial woes and constantly worrying about money. It’s draining on your finances and it’s draining on your mind and emotions. When the bills are higher than what you actually earn, or you always find yourself behind in your payments, it can feel like you’ll never get on top of things ever again.
Seeking the help of an accountant or financial advisor can certainly help and it’s a good option to look into regardless. Another option is to consolidate your debt and that’s what we’ll look at in this post.
What Is a Debt Consolidation Loan?
Debt consolidation is about simplifying your financial situation and reducing your monthly repayments and expenditure, to put the outcome in a nutshell. A Debt Consolidation Loan will allow you to pay only one set of fees and lower interest.
As an example, let’s say you had 3 credit cards that were attracting an 18% interest rate and were costing you $1,000 per month in repayments, just to make the minimum monthly payments on all 3 cards. A Debt Consolidation Loan could conceivably reduce your interest rate considerably, as well as your monthly repayment amount. To continue with the example, you might only have to repay $500 per month instead of $1,000, freeing up five hundred extra dollars of your money.
The above is simply a fictitious scenario to illustrate how debt consolidation can work to improve your financial situation without somehow magically wiping out some or all of your debt.
Debt Consolidation Loans are essentially a type of unsecured Personal Loan, so you won’t need any sort of collateral to be approved. If you do your research and work the numbers out correctly, you should certainly be able to reduce your overall monthly repayments and save on interest when you consolidate a number of debts into one single loan to repay.
Banks and private lenders offer many forms of finance. For Debt Consolidation Loans, Australia has a number of options open for people needing to do something about their financial situation so they can actually breathe easy again.
Where To Get a Good Loan Deal
It pays to shop around so you can reduce your expenses and interest as much as possible. Comparison websites are a simple, quick and easy way to study the latest deals from the major banks and other lenders.
You might find the deal you’re looking for with a traditional bank, or even a private lender. It’s worth checking into what the private lenders have to offer and not just focus on the main banks. You never know who might be offering the very best deal at the time.
One advantage with private lenders is they often offer smaller Personal Loans for consolidating your debt. You might not want $20K or $30K. Maybe all you really need is a $1,000 or so to solve your debt problem and make it easier to manage.
You might not be in a hurry to apply for a loan and have it approved, and therefore applying for a Debt Consolidation Loan with a bank should present no issues. However, if time is critical, then you’ll want to approach a private lender and fill out an online application form. Reason being is that private lenders focus a lot of attention on speed when it comes to all of their processes. Many loan applications are processed, approved and paid on the very same day. There is also a lot less documentation required by the private lenders in most cases.
Debt Consolidation Loan Eligibility
No matter which financial institution you approach, you’ll either need to have a job or self-employed to be eligible to apply for a loan. You also need to be over the age of 18, be an Australian citizen or permanent resident, present photo identification and depending on the amount you require, Centrelink must not be your main source of income.Â
Debt consolidation is well worth considering if you find yourself drowning in debt, you want to streamline your repayments or simply just want to save on excessive fees.