It is important when you want to consolidate your debt, to compare what the different lenders have to offer so you can pick the debt consolidation loan that best suits your needs. In order to do so, the smartest thing to do is to request debt consolidation loan quotes from as many lenders as possible and use some loan terms like the APR, loan length, fees and costs to compare them.

Requesting free debt consolidation quotes is not a complicated task. You can contact a lender trough different means and request information on their consolidation loan programs so you can analyze them. There are, however, some things you need to take into account when requesting loan quotes from lenders and comparing them later.

Credit Pulls And Credit Score

Each time your credit report is pulled, this fact is recorded into your credit history. Eventually, if there are too many credit pulls of your credit report, this can alter your credit score negatively because lenders will infer that you have been requesting too many financial products in a short period of time.

Thus, when requesting free debt consolidation quotes, you need to make sure that your credit report will not be pulled and that you are actually not applying for a loan instead of just requesting a free debt consolidation loan quote. Otherwise, you may end up with your credit score diminished and when you finally decide to apply for a consolidation loan you may find out that you can not qualify for one due to the resulting bad credit.

Things To Compare

The most important thing you need to compare when deciding which debt consolidation loan is best for you is the APR. The APR shows an overall cost analysis of the money borrowed including the interest rate and other fees and costs associated with financing. Generally speaking the APR should be low enough so you actually save money by consolidating and get lower monthly payments each month instead of those overwhelming credit card payments.

Thus, regardless of your credit, the APR of a debt consolidation loan should be lower than the average rate of your combined credit card balances and lower than any unsecured loan in the financial market. The only reason why you should accept a slightly higher or similar APR than the average of your current debt is if you get a significantly longer repayment program and thus, lower monthly payments easy to afford.

Consequently, the loan length is another important factor to take into account when comparing debt consolidation loan quotes. This variable determines how affordable your monthly payments will be, how long will it take for you to be debt free and how much money you will be spending on interests over the whole life of the loan.

Finally, there are other fees and costs not associated with the actual financing that these loans tend to include. Examples of these are: administrative costs, insurance, prepayment penalty charges, etc. Under certain circumstances these costs can turn an otherwise good deal into a too onerous transaction. Thus, make sure to include them in your analysis and ponder how they affect viability of the loan repayment as well as its expensiveness.