Thursday, February 14, 2008

Are My Thoughts Wise?

With all the turmoil at work, I have been toying more then ever, with a thought. A thought of borrowing from Prosper.com. There are about three reasons, let me know what you think.
  1. Lower my interest payment. Interest on my car is 10.15%, my home 16% and while the IRS debts, interest fluctuates.
  2. Get all existing debts, including IRS paid off
  3. finally, while I have no intention of defaulting, I wouldn't lose the car. in fact, if push came to shove, it would actually be easier to sell the car to pay off/down the loan and get a cheaper car.


  4. It would be my hope to get a loan for no more then 9 or 10% interest, but hopefully I would be able to funded by my peers for less. In addition, I still believe I would be able to get the debts paid off in 24 months, instead of the entire 36 month life of the loan. The only difference, is I could pull back a month or two on the aggressive payments and just pay the lower payments. The nice thing is that I would pay off or pay down the IRS debt, that I is currently being differed.

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    go ahead share your thoughts with me now.




4 comments:

  1. I am confused....your MORTGAGE loan is 16%?? That's ridiculous if that is true. Why not just refinance it if this is true. I haven't seen an interest rate that high on a mortgage since the 80's. Bank of America has a program where you pay no closing costs except for the impounds. And I mean NO CLOSING COSTS. The interest rate is about a half percent higher than what you could ultimately get qualified for, but at least the only cash you got to come up with is the impounds, which come back to you quickly from your previous escrow account. By quickly, I mean within a month or two.

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  2. Edie -
    yeah, it's a home improvement loan (new windows) and I only owe another $950 or $970 on that loan to Amerifirst. A debt I will certainly be glad to see gone, within a couple of months.

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  3. It depends on the terms that Providian is offering you. While it's true that Providian burned you once, there's no reason why you can't burn them back. If they are offering you a year or so of 0% interest, why can't you use them to your advantage. You could always take a Prosper loan at the end of the year to pay off the Providian account before the zero percent term expired.
    And of course it depends on your limit with Providian, too.
    One example that you could do to come out ahead would be to transfer the balance of your car not to Providian, and if you time it right you could "skip" a month's car payment and use the money to pay on your home improvement loan.
    That is to say, if you transfer the balance at the time that your car note would normally be due, you would have the money that you normally would use to pay your car note extra in your budget, and you could reallocate it for that month before your first providian payment came due.

    But as for Prosper, I haven't ever borrowed money from them, but I've often seen them with terms of 12% or more. It would be interesting to find out though.

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  4. jagular: I think Kevin said Providian's offering 0% on PURCHASES, not on a balance transfer.

    Kevin: Your blog would be great marketing for your Prosper proposal. However, I would figure out this layoff potential at your current employer first. That would scare investors. Start low, 9%, even 8%. If nobody funds it, you can try again at a higher rate. You'd have one loan payment with less interest! I'm pretty sure I'd fund this proposal. Let's face it: with 3% return in my money market account, good investments are very hard to find!

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