Top 10 Debt Consolidation Loans of 2024: Save Money & Simplify Payments

Life can feel overwhelming when you’re saddled with loads of debt from different creditors. For example, maybe you carry multiple credit card balances on top of having a high-interest personal loan.

Or maybe you have a loan with an adjustable rate, and your payments are starting to rise each month, making your budget more and more uncomfortable.

In these situations, it may be wise to look at a debt consolidation loan. For some people, it’s a smart choice that gets your debts organized while potentially lowering your monthly payments. Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.

Best Debt Consolidation Loans of 2022

We’ve compiled a list of the best debt consolidation loans online, along with their basic eligibility requirements. Research each one carefully to see which one can help you with your debt consolidation.

Different lenders are ideal for different borrowers. Review these options and take a look at which ones best suit your needs as well as your credit profile. Once you have your own shortlist, you can get prequalified to compare loan options and find the best offer.

Best Debt Settlement Companies of 2022

Taking out a debt consolidation loan is just one option when you want to lower your monthly payments. Another way to go is enrolling in a debt settlement program. Rather than paying off your lender in full, a debt settlement company can help negotiate an amount to repay so that the debt is considered settled.

In the meantime, you agree to freeze your credit cards and deposit cash each month into an account that they will eventually use to pay off the settlement.

However, the downside is that to make this strategy work, you must stop making payments on your owed amounts, which will cause them to go into default. That means your credit score will take a nosedive. But, the goal is to pay less than what you owe.

If you have enough debt that it seems impossible for you to ever repay, debt settlement might be a better option than filing for bankruptcy. Below are Crediful’s top two picks for debt settlement companies. You can find the full list here.

What is debt consolidation?

Debt consolidation allows you to pull all of your smaller existing debts into one new debt that you pay each month. When you take out a debt consolidation loan, you receive funds to pay off all of your existing debt, like your credit card balances and high-interest loans.

You then make a single monthly payment to your lender, rather than making multiple payments each month. Keep in mind that this is different from debt settlement in that you’re not negotiating a new amount owed. Instead, you keep the same amount of debt but pay it off differently.

Depending on your personal situation, debt consolidation loans come with both pros and cons. Therefore, it’s important to weigh both sides carefully before deciding if a debt consolidation loan is right for you.

Let’s delve into the details so that you can get closer to making a decision.

Advantages of Debt Consolidation Loans

There are several advantages and disadvantages associated with debt consolidation loans. We’ll go over all of them so you can weigh your options.

Lower Your Monthly Payments

The biggest benefit of a debt consolidation loan is the ability to lower your combined monthly payments. Because interest rates on credit cards are so high, it’s possible that you can find a lower interest rate on a debt consolidation loan instead, which means lower payments.

However, your actual interest rate depends on several factors, especially your credit score. It’s important to compare interest rates and the total cost of the debt consolidation loan to your current payments to make sure you don’t end up paying more over time. The goal is to save you money.

Improve Your Credit Score

Another advantage of taking out a debt consolidation loan is that it can actually help increase your credit score. While your amount of debt stays the same, installment loans are viewed more favorably than credit card debt.

So if the majority of your debt comes from maxed-out credit cards, you could potentially see a rise in your credit score because your credit utilization on each card has gone down.

A debt consolidation loan streamlines your monthly payments. Rather than being inundated with multiple due dates each month, you simply have one to remember. This also contributes to building a healthy credit score because it lowers your chance of having a late payment.

Disadvantages of Debt Consolidation Loans

In some cases, personal loans for debt consolidation might not be a great idea. We talked about the total cost of the loan, which needs to be reviewed holistically, not just as a monthly payment. This is true for several reasons.

Origination Fees

First, most personal loan lenders charge some sort of fee when you take out a new loan. The most common is an origination fee, typically charged as a percentage of the total loan amount.

So if you have a loan amount of $10,000 and there is a 4% origination fee, you’ll only actually receive $9,600. Next, compare interest rates and loan terms.

Even if the monthly payments look good on paper, you may be paying a lot more over an extended payment period. You can use the APR to compare interest rates and fees, but you also need to consider how much you’ll spend on interest over the entire loan term.

Changing Your Spending Habits

Finally, it doesn’t necessarily fix the root problem of your debt.

This isn’t something you need to worry about if your debt results from a one-time incident, such as an expensive medical procedure or temporary job loss. But if you habitually spend more than you earn and are still incurring new debt, then debt consolidation loans will not help you in the long run.

If this sounds like you, try to figure out how to curb your spending to stop accruing more debt. You can even talk to a debt counselor to help create a sound management plan for your finances.