Two Factors To Help Decide Whether Debt Consolidation Makes Sense Or Not
Debtors who want to determine whether debt consolidation makes sense should consider a couple of things. Ideally, both considerations will lead to improving the financial well-being of the debtor. With an improvement to personal finances as the ultimate objective, deciding whether debt consolidation makes sense becomes a much easier task.
The first option facing debtors is whether they can use the equity in their home to repay consumer debt. This was dealt with in greater in another recent article, but the bottom line is that debtors should use their home equity in order to achieve two things. The first is to obtain a better rate on their total borrowers and the second is to improve cashflow.
In this case, whether debt consolidation makes sense will depend on how the debtor can curtail (or ideally eliminate) future consumer debt. Debtors who simply rack up more and more in consumer debt following a debt consolidation will simply erode their net worth on a continual basis and, truthfully, their problem is not a debt problem, it is a spending problem.
Second, if the debtor cannot secured a loan with home equity they may have to resort to an unsecured debt consolidation loan. In such cases, unsecured debt consolidation loans probably will not yield much better rates. So the question to ask will be whether or not a consolidation will improve cashflow.
For debtors who have only this option available, it is relatively easy to calculate whether debt consolidation makes sense. All the debtor needs to do is add up all existing payments and compare that figure with the payment on the new loan. If the loan payment is less, than the debtor will improve cash flow. However, will such an improvement be “enough” to carry the debtor from month to month? If not, the problem may be bigger than something a debt consolidation loan can resolve.
Evidently, debt consolidation through home equity makes the most sense when consider both cash flow and total interest costs. When this is not an available option, borrowers need to decide whether debt consolidation makes sense through an unsecured loan. Often, only cash flow will come into question as rates will typically be higher. Options are available through specialized lenders, however (see below) where rates are usually lower than typical unsecured loans.