Debt Dumpers - 2016

[ruadisneyfan2]

Does anyone have any experience with Lending Club or Lending Tree for loans? They seem to be pretty credible and I've seen them mentioned on several debt and financial blogs. We are thinking about getting a loan to consolidate two student loans and DH's car loan. The interest rates with my credit score is far better than our current interest rates on the student loans. I haven't done the math down to the nitty-gritty, but it would be worth it based on that and the lower monthly payment alone.

Any thoughts? I've heard of SoFi too, but the interest rates from them weren't as desirable.

My only experience with Lending Tree was around a month ago looked into refinancing our mortgage. OMG! Once I put my info on their website our land line was ringing all day. Seriously, 10+ messages on our vm daily pestering the dog crap out of us.
We decided not to refi because the online calculators showed that although our monthly payment would be lower (tempting), it would start us back at 15 years again. Right now we're at 11 yrs 8 mos. So because of the time issue, we'd pay more long term by refinancing.

Anyhoo, good luck getting a better rate for you loans! If you give out your phone number, don't give a number that you actually answer if you can help it.

 

[Dentam]

Does anyone have any experience with Lending Club or Lending Tree for loans? They seem to be pretty credible and I've seen them mentioned on several debt and financial blogs. We are thinking about getting a loan to consolidate two student loans and DH's car loan. The interest rates with my credit score is far better than our current interest rates on the student loans. I haven't done the math down to the nitty-gritty, but it would be worth it based on that and the lower monthly payment alone.

Any thoughts? I've heard of SoFi too, but the interest rates from them weren't as desirable.

Have you compared their rates with what you could get with a personal loan through a credit union? I've gotten stuff in the mail from Lending Club, but I've been able to get a lot of 0% offers on cc's so have transferred most of my balances to those offers and should be able to pay them off before the offers expire.

 

[Dentam]

The other budget buster is I need a new car. My Honda has 215,000miles on it and I commute 100 miles a day so am worried about safety. Not sure if I should buy new or used. DH,s car has 185k so not sure if we should buy new and he gives me his to commute. Or should I just buy a low mileage used car? I don't want a car payment but if I get a no interest loan I will deal with it. Don't want to take too much money out of savings since we are taking out 4K to pay off window loan.
Any advice would help. Thanks.

I would definitely go for a used car with low mileage.

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Hey guys, I've been in and out. Mostly out though....But I'm hoping some of you might be able to chime in.

The housing prices in our neighborhood have finally gone up to the point that we have some decent equity in our house. Considering we were $100K upside down at one point, we're thrilled. In looking around our area, we realistically are in our forever home. To move from our house (in the low $300k) up to say $350k doesn't get us much if anything more. The $400k market doesn't exist. The next real jump is $500k and it's not worth that jump (plus we can't afford that) and then the tier after that is $700k+.

We're in debt......and I want a pool, LOL. I had one growing up, I'm a teacher (so home all summer) and we're not going to be moving. (Yes, I know the expenses and upkeep and all the "negatives" to having a pool....there's no talking me out). We're looking at refinancing. 1- we need to...we've been on an adjustable that is played out...and was great, but is now moving up. 2- we want to pull out of the equity to pay OFF our debts and get a pool. 3- the rate is AMAZING! 4- we would NOT be extending our terms (have 20 years left, and would do a 20 year), and the payment would actually put us ahead monthly as the payment would be lower then our current payment + debt we pay monthly...

With all that said, is there anything to know when you're wiping out $30k in debt on credit cards in one swoop? We have an excellent rating right now. We don't want to mess that up too much buy getting rid of all our debt (well bad debt, we'll have student loans and car payments still). Should we look at closing out cards? Should we pay them all off as soon as we get the payout? Will paying them all off at the same time flag us at all?

We haven't been adding to our credit card balances in a few years. We've been moving around to 0% cards, paying down what we could every month, etc. But it's hard to make a huge dent in a number that big! Doing this will be a HUGE weight off us! My husband (CPA) is thrilled to be getting more "good debt" and eliminating all the bad debt (yes, most debt is bad, but he's excited this will be tax friendlier debt).

THANKS!

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Does anyone have any experience with Lending Club or Lending Tree for loans? They seem to be pretty credible and I've seen them mentioned on several debt and financial blogs. We are thinking about getting a loan to consolidate two student loans and DH's car loan. The interest rates with my credit score is far better than our current interest rates on the student loans. I haven't done the math down to the nitty-gritty, but it would be worth it based on that and the lower monthly payment alone.

Any thoughts? I've heard of SoFi too, but the interest rates from them weren't as desirable.

I've "used" Lending Tree a few time to get rates. The other posters isn't kidding, as soon as you hit send, your phone will ring...and they can be relentless. In the past the re-fi hasn't made sense....but this time, it's going to work out for us. I was very happy with the lenders who contacted us this time. We had 2 decent offers. But we're doing a refi not a loan.

 

[dayvewc]

Hey guys, I've been in and out. Mostly out though....But I'm hoping some of you might be able to chime in.

The housing prices in our neighborhood have finally gone up to the point that we have some decent equity in our house. Considering we were $100K upside down at one point, we're thrilled. In looking around our area, we realistically are in our forever home. To move from our house (in the low $300k) up to say $350k doesn't get us much if anything more. The $400k market doesn't exist. The next real jump is $500k and it's not worth that jump (plus we can't afford that) and then the tier after that is $700k+.

We're in debt......and I want a pool, LOL. I had one growing up, I'm a teacher (so home all summer) and we're not going to be moving. (Yes, I know the expenses and upkeep and all the "negatives" to having a pool....there's no talking me out). We're looking at refinancing. 1- we need to...we've been on an adjustable that is played out...and was great, but is now moving up. 2- we want to pull out of the equity to pay OFF our debts and get a pool. 3- the rate is AMAZING! 4- we would NOT be extending our terms (have 20 years left, and would do a 20 year), and the payment would actually put us ahead monthly as the payment would be lower then our current payment + debt we pay monthly...

With all that said, is there anything to know when you're wiping out $30k in debt on credit cards in one swoop? We have an excellent rating right now. We don't want to mess that up too much buy getting rid of all our debt (well bad debt, we'll have student loans and car payments still). Should we look at closing out cards? Should we pay them all off as soon as we get the payout? Will paying them all off at the same time flag us at all?

We haven't been adding to our credit card balances in a few years. We've been moving around to 0% cards, paying down what we could every month, etc. But it's hard to make a huge dent in a number that big! Doing this will be a HUGE weight off us! My husband (CPA) is thrilled to be getting more "good debt" and eliminating all the bad debt (yes, most debt is bad, but he's excited this will be tax friendlier debt).

THANKS!

My suggestion would be to NOT close the accounts. I know part of the FICO is based on the ratio of credit used to credit extended. So if you pay off a card, the ratio goes down and your score goes up. But if you pay off and close the account, the ratio might go up (depending on what is left) and your score would go down.

Past that, if you have the discipline to hold on to the extra, I'd pay off any account charging interest and make small payments on any 0% accounts and collect the interest, making sure to pay them off before the promotion ends. If you aren't sure you can save the reserve, I'd pay them all off at once.

I don't think it would flag anything, but I honestly don't know.

Just my $0.02 worth.

 

[Dentam]

With all that said, is there anything to know when you're wiping out $30k in debt on credit cards in one swoop? We have an excellent rating right now. We don't want to mess that up too much buy getting rid of all our debt (well bad debt, we'll have student loans and car payments still). Should we look at closing out cards? Should we pay them all off as soon as we get the payout? Will paying them all off at the same time flag us at all?

If you pay off all of your cc's, it could potentially lower your credit score in the short term. This happened to me when I sold my house. I no longer had a "good mix" of debt and my score went down by quite a bit. Seems counterintuitive but that's the way the game works unfortunately. I would definitely not close all of the cards and I would probably keep a balance on one that has zero percent interest so you can maintain a mix of cc and installment loan debt.

 

[Ngwira]

I would definitely go for a used car with low mileage.

So i did a bit more research and apparently my car can go to 300k miles plus with proper maintenance. It's actually running fine so I have decided to just do any repairs until it dies. That is much better than a car payment! It will also give us time to pay off the windows. I plan to pay off 5k immediately and then pay the other 2k off before December. That way we won't have monthly payments hanging around in case I do need to finance a car.

 

[bcwife76]

Spendy weekend here

New tires for my car $799 total
birthday party for eldest DD $166 at a local gymnastics place for 10 girls, plus cost of food (didn't go overboard) and $35 for goody bags (I need to cut those friggin' things OUT!!!!)
new work shoes for DH, new runners for myself and youngest DD $150
and a few other assorted expenses throughout the weekend

 

[Dentam]

So i did a bit more research and apparently my car can go to 300k miles plus with proper maintenance. It's actually running fine so I have decided to just do any repairs until it dies. That is much better than a car payment! It will also give us time to pay off the windows. I plan to pay off 5k immediately and then pay the other 2k off before December. That way we won't have monthly payments hanging around in case I do need to finance a car.

I made the exact same decision about my car recently and it is running fine after I replaced the throttle position sensor. I am going to get new tires for it before winter hits since they are getting low on tread. I already priced the tires and it won't be too expensive to replace them - about $400 it looks like. Guessing they'll add labor to that though.

 

[DnA2010]

Spendy weekend here

New tires for my car $799 total
birthday party for eldest DD $166 at a local gymnastics place for 10 girls, plus cost of food (didn't go overboard) and $35 for goody bags (I need to cut those friggin' things OUT!!!!)
new work shoes for DH, new runners for myself and youngest DD $150
and a few other assorted expenses throughout the weekend

that's not bad for a birthday party really- we've been really lucky as for the past 3-4 years DD has wanted her party at inlaw's farm which makes it super cheap- just the cost of some food and then the goody bags- we have cut down to something either edible that's homemade (we've done caramel apples, homemade smore packages) or something useful (ie last year they got those little hand sanitizers from bath and body works that they are all into that I got on discount for 25 cents each!)
3 pairs of shoes for $150 isn't bad either!

 

[bcwife76]

@DnA2010 actually the birthday party was very reasonable compared to many other places around here!

The shoes were from Payless lol So we might be back in just a few months to get more...... ;-)

 

[PrincessKymm]

Well Murphy hit again. I ended up in the ER with kidney stones and a kidney infection. I haven't had a bad stone attack in years. My 2nd infection in a year tho so I'm a little concerned. Might be time for a visit to my urologist.

Financially, I have about $250 left in my FSA. That won't cover my whole deductible that is left but it's close. Everything after is 90/10 so hopefully I won't be too bad off. When I finally got triaged my BP was 185/105 so I'm hoping my insurance will deem this as a necessary visit. I have an emergency fund for reasons like this but I hate the thought of it going away. I'll probably make payment arrangements.

 

[Ngwira]

I made the exact same decision about my car recently and it is running fine after I replaced the throttle position sensor. I am going to get new tires for it before winter hits since they are getting low on tread. I already priced the tires and it won't be too expensive to replace them - about $400 it looks like. Guessing they'll add labor to that though.

Yeah here's hoping I can get at least one year out of it. Happy for you too.

 

[gracie1]

Hey guys, I've been in and out. Mostly out though....But I'm hoping some of you might be able to chime in.

The housing prices in our neighborhood have finally gone up to the point that we have some decent equity in our house. Considering we were $100K upside down at one point, we're thrilled. In looking around our area, we realistically are in our forever home. To move from our house (in the low $300k) up to say $350k doesn't get us much if anything more. The $400k market doesn't exist. The next real jump is $500k and it's not worth that jump (plus we can't afford that) and then the tier after that is $700k+.

We're in debt......and I want a pool, LOL. I had one growing up, I'm a teacher (so home all summer) and we're not going to be moving. (Yes, I know the expenses and upkeep and all the "negatives" to having a pool....there's no talking me out). We're looking at refinancing. 1- we need to...we've been on an adjustable that is played out...and was great, but is now moving up. 2- we want to pull out of the equity to pay OFF our debts and get a pool. 3- the rate is AMAZING! 4- we would NOT be extending our terms (have 20 years left, and would do a 20 year), and the payment would actually put us ahead monthly as the payment would be lower then our current payment + debt we pay monthly...

With all that said, is there anything to know when you're wiping out $30k in debt on credit cards in one swoop? We have an excellent rating right now. We don't want to mess that up too much buy getting rid of all our debt (well bad debt, we'll have student loans and car payments still). Should we look at closing out cards? Should we pay them all off as soon as we get the payout? Will paying them all off at the same time flag us at all?

We haven't been adding to our credit card balances in a few years. We've been moving around to 0% cards, paying down what we could every month, etc. But it's hard to make a huge dent in a number that big! Doing this will be a HUGE weight off us! My husband (CPA) is thrilled to be getting more "good debt" and eliminating all the bad debt (yes, most debt is bad, but he's excited this will be tax friendlier debt).

THANKS!

Your credit score could possibly go up some. I know whenever I had a balance reported on my credit report it would drop a couple points and then when I paid off the balance it went back up. Now I try to pay it off before they even report it. Are you looking at an in ground pool?
If you could refinance your home and your monthly payment is less then that is good! Is that what your planning or are you planning on taking out a home equity loan separately? You could also look into refinancing for less years and pay off the home faster. My personal opinion is if I had $30k in debt I wouldn't be adding a pool depending on the costs. If it was only a couple thousand dollars I would consider but if your talking about an unground pool that costs thousands then I personally wouldn't do it.

 

[DisneyMandC]

So i did a bit more research and apparently my car can go to 300k miles plus with proper maintenance. It's actually running fine so I have decided to just do any repairs until it dies. That is much better than a car payment! It will also give us time to pay off the windows. I plan to pay off 5k immediately and then pay the other 2k off before December. That way we won't have monthly payments hanging around in case I do need to finance a car.

I didn't get a chance to comment on your car situation before, but I'm glad you made this decision. I was thinking originally that your Honda should last you a while longer yet! I had a Lexus (aka Toyota) that lasted me 265k miles before the repairs finally outweighed the value of the car. I still miss that car!

Well Murphy hit again. I ended up in the ER with kidney stones and a kidney infection. I haven't had a bad stone attack in years. My 2nd infection in a year tho so I'm a little concerned. Might be time for a visit to my urologist.

Financially, I have about $250 left in my FSA. That won't cover my whole deductible that is left but it's close. Everything after is 90/10 so hopefully I won't be too bad off. When I finally got triaged my BP was 185/105 so I'm hoping my insurance will deem this as a necessary visit. I have an emergency fund for reasons like this but I hate the thought of it going away. I'll probably make payment arrangements.

I hope you're feeling better soon! That is no fun for sure.


Thanks for everyone's feedback on Lending Tree/Lending Club. We haven't been bombarded with calls yet, thankfully! We haven't had a chance to look into it further yet as FIL woke up yesterday and is recognizing everyone and doing well, so we're spending time with him! It does seem like this would be a good option for us though. Part of our problem is we just have so many separate payments between DH's car and the student loans. If we could pay off the car and just one of the student loans, it would really help us out until we can get my mega student loan payment lowered when we filed our taxes separately next year.

 

[Eureka]

Well Murphy hit again. I ended up in the ER with kidney stones and a kidney infection. I haven't had a bad stone attack in years. My 2nd infection in a year tho so I'm a little concerned. Might be time for a visit to my urologist.

Financially, I have about $250 left in my FSA. That won't cover my whole deductible that is left but it's close. Everything after is 90/10 so hopefully I won't be too bad off. When I finally got triaged my BP was 185/105 so I'm hoping my insurance will deem this as a necessary visit. I have an emergency fund for reasons like this but I hate the thought of it going away. I'll probably make payment arrangements.

Oh no! Hope you are feeling better now. Medical stuff always throws a wrench in plans. A few weeks ago I was having stomach pain that didn't feel normal....of course since Nov I have had no appendix but didn't know what it was. Went to Patient first where they did X-rays to make sure it was not an obstruction bc of my recent surgery. It was not and went away the next day, so I felt kinda silly having gone. But that was another $153 I could have saved for other things (since I have gotten some freelancing but nothing full time yet).

 

[Ngwira]

DisneyMC, thanks for the feedback. I did pray about it yesterday morning and as soon as I got into the car, it was like God was speaking to me to hold onto it. I just felt a peace about it..weird I know but I got my answer! I just hope it lasts at least a year more, that would be awesome.

 

[PrincessKymm]

Murphy is a D***. My infection hasn't responded to antibiotics so I had to be admitted to the hospital. I'll be here for 1-3 days. I really don't want to ask how much these bills will be. Argh!!!!!!!

 

[dayvewc]

Murphy is a D***. My infection hasn't responded to antibiotics so I had to be admitted to the hospital. I'll be here for 1-3 days. I really don't want to ask how much these bills will be. Argh!!!!!!!

I'm so sorry. I hope you get to feeling better soon, and that the bill isn't as bad as you fear.