Career Development Loan Repayment...?

A.J

Hi everyone,

I have read a bit about this on the rest of the site, but wanted to ask advice about my specific situation as I'm quite nervous about making a mistake when it comes to loans.

I have a career development loan (CDL) of £6430 to be repaid over 2 years starting on 1st November 2008.

The monthly repayments would be £302.64.
In total I would pay back £7262.67

I've heard that I should get a loan with a better interest rate and pay off my CDL as quickly as possible. But I have a couple of questions:

1) If my repayments are due to start in November, when should I apply for the new loan?

2) Can a CDL be repaid immediately? ie. Before my first repayment on November 1st.

3) I would be willing to sacrifice savings in the long term for lower monthly repayments as I'm not going to be earning as much as I thought. I'd really like to pay less than the £302.64 per month. What would be the best way of going about this? Get the new loan to be repaid over three years (for example) instead of two?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

dannynixon

In regards taking out a new loan, the APR on your CDL is about 12.65%. It really depends upon two things,

What is your credit file like? Good, average, poor?
Depending on your credit file, are you likely to get a better rate than 12.65% ?




If you take a loan out at a similar rate of 12.65% APR over 3 years, your loan would be somewhere around £213.62.

It depends on your credit file, is it any good?

A.J

dannynixon wrote: »

It depends on your credit file, is it any good?

I have no idea, how do I find that out?

I'm not sure what determines how good the credit file is, but I've got a student loan, a graduate account with a full overdraft (been charged for going overdrawn twice) and this CDL. I'll be earning about £950 per month.

dannynixon

You can apply for a copy of your credit report at the different agencies. They are Expedia, equifax and call credit. I think each one costs £2.

Here are the web addresses, Clapton posted the addresses in a different post so have just lifted them from his.

http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/index.html

https://www.econsumer.equifax.co.uk/consumer/uk/sitepage.ehtml?forward=gb_elearning_credit14

http://www.callcredit.plc.uk/corporate_scripts/consumer_creditreport.asp

Contact these and see how you get on. You will see any missed payments etc