Trying to find a better loan or what?

laplen

I am paying off a Formal loan of £40.000. At £687.00 per month over 7yrs at 11.1% apr with Lloyds bank. A year has gone bye and I want to pay off 10.000 and bring it down to 24.000 Personal loan.
I applied to Lloyds for a new personal loan but they said the interest rate on the new loan would be 15% then knocked them down to13.5%. (have not taken their offer yet). A month before this it was 9.9% (left it too late and screwed up). Of course it’s not within the bank’s interest to help my situation due to them making less profit from my existing interest rates. I have no mortgage due to living on a boat. I have excellent credit rating and no dept. In full time employment with 45.000 gross pay.
I understood from your website that it was unwise to apply around for loans as this would affect my credit rating.
Can anyone tell me the best course of action?

Rafter

laplen,

Lucky you living on a boat and sorry about your loan problem.

Getting a big loan like that, with your exisitng loan still showing on your record is going to be really tough and you may be wasting your time making loads of applications.

Your best bet would seem to be to get some sort of 'marine finance' loan secured on your boat and repay Lloyds in order to get your rate down. Try ads in the nautical press? You will be putting your boat at risk if you can't keep up payments though.

Otherwise you can try chipping away at the debt using smaller loans and 'life of balance' credit cards to try and reduce your overall interest bill.

Good luck

R.

laplen

I am worried about putting the boat at risk. Not that there is any particular risk at present. But the marine finance is risking my home.
Am I being naive, I dont consider 25000 in todays standards as being such a large loan providing we earn a reasonable salary.
Forgive my ignorance about credit cards but don't the people of this web site recommend not trying to balance with cards due to the difficulty of the amount and possibly running out of available cards with it's duration of time.
If there was any chance of the bank base rate lowering in the near future I could take on a separate loan within Lloyds that would be ideal. But I do need to do something within the next couple of months to help my ex wife set up her new business after being made redundant.