Please help me switching loan.

Beer.Fairy83

Hey All,

Okay, so I started college about two years ago doing a digital media degree and wasting all my loan money on various forms of rubbish. About halfway through the first year however, I realised that doing digital media and on my course especially, it might be advisable to own an Apple Mac.

I began to realise that although I had a workable PC with which I might have been able to scrape by, realistically, it was not powerful enough to handle the types of programs I was using. Unless I wanted my grades to suffer, I would have to stop moving and converting my work between the Macs in my College and my own dusty old PC and actually buy some sort of Mac.

The other problem was that until this point I had successfully avoided the need to take out any further loans or cards and as such, had no real credit history. This however meant that the only company who would actually give me a loan, was the company I wanted to buy my Mac from as it was to buy their product. Luckily, I got a pretty good deal on the machine which was a 15" G4 Powerbook and managed to drum up about £500, but I was still roughly about £1000 short of the asking price. So I took out a £1000 loan at a rate of 28.8% APR

Ludicrous I know but I really mean that they were THE ONLY guys who would give me a loan. I didn't even qualify for some sort of burasry from my college and had already maxed out my student overdraft and loans. A year and a half on, the amount required to pay the loan off is about £1700 and the amount left to repay is about £1400. My monthly payments are £47.05 and with all my other bills, I just can not afford to keep that up.

I have since taken a year out to work and pay off debts and am earning about £1000/month. I have two credit cards at about £500 and my rent is £90/week. After all my other bills I have little money left over but my biggest payment by far is 'The Loan.' I figure that if I could reduce that loan more quickly or reduce the installments, I'd be doing ok. In addition to all of this, I have ofcourse had about 2 or 3 late payments with each account this year so my credit rating or whatever is probably worse now than if I didn't have one at all.

If anyone could suggest a way of me dealing with 'That Loan', I would be most eternally grateful.

Regards
Beer.Fairy

Magentasue

Maybe you would get more response on the Debt Free Wannabe board?

What they would say to you over there is:

1) Work out your budget - total income and EVERY outgoing from debt repayments down to daily newspaper

2) List your debts with Total Owed, APR, monthly repayment

3) Is your credit rating good enough now to get low/zero interest credit? Have you every defaulted? Any CCJs?

When you post this info, I'm sure people will suggest ways to reduce your outgoings and cut your interest so that you can throw more at your debt repayments.

HTH

Catch_A_Fire

if you've not missed any repayments yet you might be able to get a consolidation loan to cover both your cards and the Mac loan. If you're still in employment (not studying full time) you might be accepted with a better rate than your cards or loan, though don't expect to get the "typical" apr, you've not been in your job long and i assume you're fairly young. also if you do make applications make sure you're on the electoral role for the address you are applying from (own/parents house). take whatever steps you can to avoid falling behind on payments!