Debt Consolidation Loan Or a Personal Loan?
A personal loan is a debt incurred under your name, and regardless of the purpose of it it still hits your credit account as another source of financial obligation. While there may be savings realized on the monthly payments, the credit rating may suffer for some time due to a lack of clarity on the purpose of the loan. It takes time for the pay off of the credit accounts to hit the rating, and even after the accounts are paid off there is still a personal loan opened for the amount of the credit cards money owed. Unless these ones are canceled, the effect could be negative.
A debt consolidation program is flagged as such on a client's credit report, and the purpose of that kind of a program is readily evident to anyone that reads it. There may be a hit on the scoring at first, but as payments are made each month the rating should stabilize and then go up. There is no extra debts on the report that is unaccounted for, and the consolidating program shows that they are being dealt with.
