What is a loan?
For many small and medium-sized purchases, running from a few hundred to a several thousand pounds, loans can be an excellent source of credit.
At their simplest, you simply borrow a certain amount of money and agree to pay it back at an agreed rate of interest over periods between six months and up to 10 years.
Interest rates on that loan are fixed at the outset, so you know exactly how much you are paying back each month. This can help with budgeting.
In the past, people tended to go to their own bank for a loan. But in recent years, competition between lenders means that it is possible to go to a far wider variety of sources for a loan, thus bringing down the overall cost.
There are two main types of loan:
-
Unsecured
This means that the loan is not tied to any item, such as your home. If you do not pay it off, you may face a poor credit rating in future, but you will not put your property in jeopardy. Of course, this means unsecured loans are more expensive, since the lender is taking more of a risk that it will not get its money back.
- Secured
As the name implies, a secured loan is usually tied to your home. If you do not repay the loan, you could face eviction. This makes secured loan rates cheaper, in many cases, than unsecured ones.
Loans are like mortgages in the sense that, at first, you are mostly paying back interest and only further down the line are greater amounts of your capital paid off.
But there is one feature of most loans that is different to mortgages: interest is set at the outset. Also, this means that if you repay the capital you owe ahead of time, you do not avoid paying any future interest as a result: you will be required to pay back some of the outstanding interest too.
This can sometimes prove to be unexpectedly expensive. Not all loan providers operate in this way, so it makes sense to check.
The other thing to consider is that, unlike other types of credit, for example credit cards, you are required to keep paying a loan off regardless of your financial circumstances.
What are some different types of loans?
Installment Loan
When you get an installment loan, you borrow all of the money at once and repay it in set amounts, or installments, on a regular schedule over a period of time.
Line of Credit
A personal line of credit is a type of revolving credit that lets you write checks for the amount you want to borrow, up to a limit set by the lender. The credit doesn't cost anything until you write a check. Then you begin to pay interest on the amount you borrowed. Whatever you repay becomes available for you to borrow again.
|