Introduction

My name is Jonathan Rich. I’m a licensed CPA in the state of Louisiana. And as a licensed CPA, typically I’ll make videos about like how to run your business, improve your workflows, what softwares are out there. But I also find myself talking to business owners about maybe some of their personal financial items, especially when it comes to like income tax season, and just talking money. Now, with that, I’m not a certified financial planner. I don’t have any certificates. I’m really good at accounting and that’s about it. So, take everything I’m about to say with a grain of salt.

This article may contain links to lenders or comparison sites that could pay a referral fee if you sign up through them. That doesn’t change what’s covered here, but it’s worth knowing upfront.

What Debt Consolidation Loans Are Used For

Sometimes we get into the topics of, well, I’m paying a lot in interest. And these are always candid conversations, because maybe the person that I’m speaking with has, maybe they went on a couple vacations, maybe they spent a little bit more than they should have, and now they’re saying, “Oh, crap. I got to pay all this back.” And I have no idea how, and the interest rates on these credit cards are 31% APR, and I’m just up the creek without a paddle. Well, fear not. There are some things out there. So, this is going to be kind of a little bit more fun video. I guess it is kind of a grim topic to discuss, but sometimes you need debt consolidation loans and you need to know where to find them.

And I would venture to say more people than not have probably at least considered taking out a debt consolidation loan. Basically, I’ve got three or four credit cards. Maybe they’re almost all at 80% utilization or they’re almost maxed. I’m paying $2,000 a month in interest. I’m not touching the principal. Well, a debt consolidation loan says, “Okay, we’ll give you the money to pay off all these cards.” Then, in a perfect world, you put all those credit cards in the desk and you don’t touch them. You don’t run up any bills on them and then you pay us 12% APR plus the debt consolidation loan. Typically they’re unsecured. It can be a real savvy financial tool

if you can exercise a little bit of discipline. Or you can run up that credit card balance again and now you have a credit card, max credit cards and a debt consolidation loan. That’s never ideal. It’s what we try and avoid, but it can be a really good and powerful tool to put money back in your pocket.

Why the Topic Feels Taboo

It’s definitely something that I think should be talked about, even though it’s a little taboo because if you feel like you need one, you’ve probably lived above your means.

Comparison Sites for Debt Consolidation Loans

Now that we kind of know what they are and what they’re used for, how do we find a decent one? That’s the crux of today’s video. We’re going to talk about sites that can help you find one. I’ve got Best Money, Bankrate, NerdWallet, Intuit Credit Karma, and of course, LendingTree.

How These Comparison Sites Make Money

These are all basically comparison sites. And they say, “Okay, these lenders will pay us a couple bucks to put their listings up top. You shop around, pick one, and then if you pick one from our site, then we get some money from it.” And that’s how they all work. Just to be transparent with you, sometimes for instance Freedom Debt Relief or Accredited Debt Relief may send dollars to Best Money or may send dollars to Intuit to put their credit card or their debt consolidation loan up at the top. You need to make sure that you shop around and

you’re getting the best rate on your debt consolidation loan cuz remember we’re trying to get out from interest. We don’t want to be paying interest for nothing for the privilege of borrowing. So I always say cross shop, check a couple different sites and make sure that you are getting the best deal that you can.

Best Money

You can see here, say goodbye to debt. This is on Best Money. I like the layout of Best Money. I like how it here’s what we offer. There’s four or five hits right here. How big is your debt? It’s less than 10,000. There’s one or two there and then more than 15,000. They’re going to be able to tailor those offerings to whatever you need. And then you just jump in. You can say, “Okay, let’s see, 9.7, 9.1, maybe the minimum debt. Maybe I’ve got $25,000. So, I’ll check out Accredited.” You jump in there. Wait for it to load. Answer a couple questions.

Some of these will do a soft credit pull. Be careful on that if you’re already struggling with poor credit. Some of them may say, “Hey, we’re going to do a hard inquiry.” And then you’ll just go back and forth on some of these, enter that information, see if you get approved, check your APR, make sure you’re happy with it. That’s how they all work. That’s Best Money.

What Jonathan Likes About Best Money

Like, once again, I like their layout. I like how it presents. It’s very clean. And then if maybe I’m also interested in maybe getting a checking account or, maybe my credit cards need to be updated because I’m not getting any points, they offer a lot of stuff and a lot of these sites typically do. So, but overall, I like the feel, the way it looks. It’s easy to navigate. It’s transparent. You tell them what you need, they give it to you. And that’s kind of what a website should be. It shouldn’t be tons of ads. It shouldn’t be, “Hey, what about this? What about these articles? You interested in this? Give us your social security number so we can steal your identity.” None of that stuff. So, overall, I like the way Best Money is running their shop.

Bankrate

The next one I want to talk about is Bankrate. Bankrate is an older player in the game and you can see here that they offer a ton of things just like Best Money. Most of these sites will be very multifaceted. I like Bankrate because it’s been around for a long time. I believe it was a magazine before it was online, so that should tell you about how old it is. But you can see they have banking options, mortgages, investing, credit cards, loans, stuff like that. And so if you’re looking for a debt consolidation loan, you’re going to go under loans and you’re probably going to go look at personal loans or something of that nature. So personal loans, best loans for debt consolidation. You pick it and it should pull up a couple options similar to Best Money.

Bankrate’s Limited Offerings in This Search

And you can see here, let’s see, that is actually not my zip code. Let’s hit reset filters and see if they have anything within Bankrate.

Bankrate’s Educational Content

Now what I do like about Bankrate is they do have, and we’ll talk about this on NerdWallet too, they offer a little bit of education because I feel like an educated decision maker makes better decisions. That can be both a pro and a con. If you know what you’re looking for, maybe you’re a little savvy in finance, you don’t need to read all these articles to understand what a debt consolidation loan is, what credit card utilization is, what APR is. None of that. You should be able to just say, “Okay, tell me what the rate is. Tell me what my payback is.

Tell me how much interest I have.” That’s going to be a site like Best Money in my opinion. Or maybe LendingTree. But if you want to learn a little bit, then Bankrate and NerdWallet do a really good job with that. So once again, really surprised that there were no debt consolidation loan offerings whenever I just punch in. I wonder if I just change it to something smaller and see if it comes up. Nope. Reset. Well, that’s Bankrate. Hopefully you don’t need a debt consolidation loan from Bankrate today.

NerdWallet

NerdWallet is very similar to the other ones. They have a really deep offering of things. Personal finance, what type of loan are we looking for? Do we need a debt consolidation loan? Do we need a personal loan? Do we need a car loan? They offer it all. Let me scroll back up here. Personal loans is kind of what you want to be looking at. You can also go here under loans. Personal loans. Let’s see. And you can see debt consolidation loans here. Drill into that, and they do have offerings unlike Bankrate. So they’re more akin to Best Money in the fact that they actually have something that they can showcase.

Why NerdWallet Stands Out

Part of the reason I like NerdWallet is because they do what Bankrate does and they’re going to explain to you what it is. So you can see right here on their header here’s a debt consolidation loan. Once again, it’s usually used to consolidate debt at a lower APR. Be wary though, you do want to be on the lookout for that APR. You can see here at 35.99% that’s higher than some credit card interest, at least in this example. There’s no point consolidating debt

if the APR is going to be higher or just as high. But you can see here if you’ve got pretty good credit, it could be as low as 7%. If you’ve got a bunch of loans on Home Depot or Lowe’s cards at 31%, well, if you can consolidate that at 6 and a half%, that’s a great move for household finance in that scenario. They’ll educate you a little bit. They have tons of different calculators,

things like that. I do like how clean their site is as well. They kind of look like Best Money. There’s not a lot of things in the banners. There’s not ads being pushed at the top and bottom. They’re going to say, “Hey, here it is. This is what people like.” They tell you if there’s an impact on the credit score, you can kind of drop down and see what the pros and cons are. NerdWallet has been around for a while. It’s a good platform. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Credit Karma

This one I have a bone to pick because I’m an accountant. I deal with QuickBooks. Credit Karma is owned by Intuit. Most people might have the app downloaded on their phone. I do. I check it every now and then to make sure that no one stole my identity, that no one’s opened any credit cards, and that I didn’t forget to make a payment anywhere.

It’s a decent tool. It’s free. It was one of the first free ones, which is why it’s so ubiquitous. Now you can get tons of different credit locks and credit checks for free. Intuit was just the one who did it first. So, they also offer the same services that Best Money, Bankrate, and NerdWallet do. They are basically a consolidator and they say, “Hey, we’ve got all these different lending options for you.” People pay them for it. So, why do I have a bone to pick with it?

Concerns About Data Sharing

For whatever reason, Intuit, who owns Credit Karma as the parent company, also owns QuickBooks, which I deal with daily. In my experience, they seem to sell your data as soon as you input anything, and you just get flooded with spam, phone calls, mailers, emails. It just drives me nuts. And they specifically seem to be the worst one in my opinion for that. And so because they have all of your information, if you have a credit card, my account, like if I was to hit login and punch my stuff in, they’re going to have all my details.

They’re going to have my social. They’re going to have everything, and so they can push it to all their partners who will then try and reach out and I just don’t like that because I don’t like my phone being blown up. So, that is specific to Credit Karma in my experience. I’m sure some of the other ones do it too. Maybe it’s a bit more toned down.

What Credit Karma Shows You

You can see here they have the same type of banner ads. It’s pretty clean. They’re going to tell you everything you need to know. Your APR, how much you can get, what your approval odds are, how long the loan terms are. So, once again, we’re always looking for that lower rate and we always want to cross shop. We want to make sure that we’re not just picking Upstart because it’s the first one, because Upstart could have said, “Hey, Credit Karma, we’ll give you a little bit of money if you make us number one

.” We want to make sure we’re cross shopping. Check with sites like Best Money or Bankrate. See what’s out there. Don’t dig your hole deeper. So, just make sure you’re doing your due diligence. You can see here there’s not a ton of debt consolidation loans under Credit Karma. It’s closer to Bankrate. Whereas NerdWallet had no shortage of them.

LendingTree

The final one I want to talk about is LendingTree. A lot of these sites are very similar. You’re just going to pick on what you need and then it’s up to you to cross shop. Enter a couple questions. Let’s say I need $25,000. We’ll hit continue. I need it right now. And see, this right here is where I stop, because I’m not interested in giving LendingTree the last four of my social, where I live, my date of birth, how much money I need, or what my credit score might be. I don’t like to hand out personal information on the web. And so that is definitely a strike against LendingTree in my opinion.

What LendingTree Offers Without Personal Data

I just wanted to kind of walk through that and showcase it and just be genuine. I’m not interested in sharing what already isn’t out there about me since we’re always being tracked and watched and our phones are listening to us. Sorry, I’m on a soap box. But I just want to make sure that you understand that LendingTree does offer a ton of different products. Let’s see. If I go here to LendingTree, we’ll go to their landing page. We’ll make sure not to click on the sponsored ads. They do offer a ton of different products. So, equity, home purchase, credit cards, business loans, personal loans. If I click on personal loans here, you can see they have debt consolidation loans.

You don’t have to enter your information in to learn about them, but if you are interested in seeing what the actual offers are and click get your rates, they’re going to ask for a lot of that. So, LendingTree will educate you, they’ll kind of walk you through. But before you can see where you’re going to land, you’ll have to do that data entry.

Final Thoughts on Choosing a Debt Consolidation Loan

There’s tons of different sites out there. Pick the one that you think is going to have the lowest APR, who’s going to be able to get you the information that you need. And then cross shop. Always cross shop. Try and find the ones who are going to give you the best rate. I don’t know how many times I can say it before I start to sound crazy, but we don’t want to make a bad problem worse. We don’t want to compound mistakes.

We don’t want to take out a 32% debt consolidation loan if our credit cards were already at 34% and then run those cards back up. Try and make it to where you are making the situation a little bit better. Hope you learned something. These are some of the bigger players in the space. And I hope you’re able to get your household financial picture in order and in better shape.