I have a loan at 17.4% with Natwest.. what can I do?

ojosef

Hello all!

I currently have a loan which is like this:

• Starting balance: £6,500
• Current balance: £3,600
• APR: 17.4%
• Monthly fixed payment: £185

I seriously want to cut down the interest on this loan, I have been paying it now for just over 2 years, I am pretty sure when I bought it the interest was 14.9%... anyway.

I just called Natwest and asked them if they can reduce the interest rate. Their offer was:

• Round up the loan to £3,700
• Set the duration to 24 months
• The new interest rate will be 21.1% (They said because the amount is low)
• Payment of £202.1 per month

They couldn't offer anything else.

Does anyone on here have any sounds advice as to what I can do with this loan to reduce the interest rate?

By the way I can pay lump sums without penalty on it.

Tixy

Have you checked your initial paperwork to see what apr is shown and whether it is variable?

Can you afford to pay more per month (eg £202 rather than £185)? if so then you would be better off keeping the existing loan and paying off extra each month, whilst it might not reduce your APR it will reduce the amount of interest you pay.

Or are you asking if you might get a better APR somewhere else? That would be difficult for people to advise without knowing more a lot more info about your circumstances. But I would have thought that for a loan under £4k that 17.4% does not seem particularly high. The best rates according to this http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/cheap-personal-loans#uk would be 12.9%-14.9% although thats not the rate you would be guaranteed to get.

BenL

If you look in Martins article http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cards/balance-transfer-credit-cards there is a link to an MBNA credit card that does cash advances to your current account for a fee of 1.9% of the money and then it is interest free for 12 months.

You can then use the cash to pay the loan off, hit the repayments hard and if you don't clear it within 12 months do another balance transfer to another credit card.

Never ever take the credit card out of the house, leave it in a folder or cut it up, never ever ever spend on it.


The above advice assumes you have a good credit history, fulltime job etc etc

Ben