Whether you’re struggling to manage your finances or you simply want to free up a bit of cash, the right kind of debt consolidation could help.
Debt consolidation basically means combining your debts into one, which has several advantages. One is that by having all your debts in one place, rather than making several different payments, you should find managing your finances becomes a lot simpler. Secondly, debt consolidation can enable you to rearrange your repayments, and in some cases reduce the amount you pay each month.
But how can you consolidate your debts? We’ll answer some of your debt consolidation questions here.
Debt consolidation loan
A debt consolidation loan is a new loan used to pay off existing debts, leaving you with one debt instead of many. It can also be used to reduce your monthly payments - by repaying the new loan over a longer period of time than originally planned.
All this can make budgeting a lot simpler, and the reduced payments can help you to free up cash for other things.
Debt consolidation remortgage
If you’re a homeowner, it may be possible to use the money you’ve put into your home – also known as your ‘equity’ – to repay some of your debts.
You could do this by remortgaging. Let’s say you have a £100,000 home and you’ve paid £30,000 towards it so far (e.g. a £25,000 deposit, plus £5,000 of mortgage repayments) – your equity. When you come to remortgage, you may be able to borrow some of that £30,000 back to pay off your debts.
Anything you borrow back will come straight out of your equity. So if you have £5,000 of debts and use your remortgage to pay them off, you’d be left with £25,000 of equity instead of £30,000 (and you’d then have £75,000 left to repay, instead of £70,000).
Bear in mind that because you’ll have a smaller deposit to put down on a new mortgage, you may have to pay a higher interest rate as a result. You may want to check this with your mortgage lender before you go ahead.
0% interest credit card
If you have one or more credit card debts that are costing you a lot in interest, you could transfer those debts to a 0% interest credit card. As the name suggests, these cards don’t charge any interest for an agreed period, meaning you can repay the debts interest-free.
In effect, this means more of each payment you make goes towards your debts – and not interest.
But remember: once the interest-free period is over, you’ll start paying interest again, so it’s generally best if you can repay the debts in full before the 0% period runs out.
Finally, a note about all debt consolidation: it’s only worthwhile if your finances are fairly comfortable. People with serious debt problems should opt for a debt solution designed to help in that situation, such as a debt management plan or an IVA. And remember that unless the interest rate you pay is 0%, a longer repayment period will cost you more in the long run than if you had paid everything back sooner.
Some useful debt consolidation resources are :-
Debtadvicenow.co.uk
Direct.gov.uk