what is up I'm Jason with the honest finance Channel today I want to talk to
you guys about the three best personal loans that I've found and seriously I
looked everywhere for a personal loan I checked banks I checked credit unions
I checked online I had to look everywhere because I needed one in my
personal life and now I'm gonna share with you guys the three best companies
that I found so you can make your own decision if you're looking for a
personal loan so in this video I'm gonna go over why you'd actually want a
personal loan and I'll cover the three loans that I found and I'll go over the
pros and cons of each of them so that you can make your own decision if you're
looking for a personal loan now if you just came across this channel I do talk
a lot about financial subjects so if you're interested in this type of
content then feel free to subscribe or at least give the video a like so the
first question you'll be asking is why exactly would you want to get a personal
loan so for me personally I had to look for a personal loan because I had a
ginormous yard project that I had to complete and I didn't want to do a home
equity loan or anything like that because the rates and terms were a lot
more simplified to just do a personal loan so basically if you've got big home
improvements or you're gonna do something expensive like adoption or
you've got really expensive medical bills then I would suggest going with a
personal loan and I'd also recommend one if you're trying to consolidate your
credit card debt because if you've got credit card debt and you take a personal
loan then the rate on the personal loan is probably going to be a lot better
than your credit cards rate and in the financial terminology they would call
this a debt consolidation loan you're just taking your credit card debt and
you're moving it into a personal loan that hopefully has a better rate the
only warning that I have though with consolidating credit card debt is that
you've got to get on top of your credit cards otherwise you're going to end up
with two bills if you don't change your spending habits you're gonna end up with
a personal loan and you're gonna have credit card debt so everything's just
going to get worse so if you do end up consolidating your credit card debt
through a personal loan or anything like that then just make sure your spending
habits change so you don't end up having credit card debt again so the three
companies that I'm gonna talk about they don't actually charge your adjacent fees
and they don't have prepayment penalties like some of the other guys do so when
most of us think of personal loans we're gonna think of companies like Lending
Club and prosper because those are the ones that pop up all over the place
online but most of these guys actually charge origination fees
and 1% on like $10,000 is only a hundred bucks but it's still a hundred bucks
that you're giving up when some of the other guys don't actually charge that
and most of the big banks and the credit unions that I looked into had rates that
were so high that I didn't even bother looking any further so with all the
research that I had to do to figure out which personal loan I actually wanted to
go with the conclusion I came to was these three specific companies and
that's because they didn't charge any dirty fees they didn't have prepayment
penalties and their rates and their terms were really good so one more thing
I want to mention about these lenders and getting personal loans is that you
have to have a really high credit score in order to even qualify for these loans
through these lenders so if you've got a really bad score and I would probably
look into some other companies because these ones are just based on really good
credit scores and seriously if your credit score sucks then I would highly
suggest trying to improve it because you're never gonna get good rates on any
type of money that you're trying to borrow so the first lender for personal
loans that I want to talk about is American Express so honestly I had no
idea that American Express tat personal loans I just thought that they focused
mainly on credit cards but apparently they do personal loans and they even
have savings accounts that have better rates than most banks and once I started
looking into American Express as personal loans they actually had really
good rates and really good terms their rates are currently about seven to
twenty percent you can borrow thirty five hundred to forty thousand dollars
from American Express and they offer 12 24 and 36 month loans so when you
compare these numbers to other lenders American Express is extremely
competitive but just keep in mind that you do have to be an American Express
card holder in order to actually get one of these personal loans from them now
take a look at this ad that I got from American Express yesterday when I was
doing the script for this video now it's kind of creepy that they actually sent
me one of these ads because it's like they knew that I was looking up all this
personal loan stuff but it looks as though I'm pre-qualified for a 7% rate
for $25,000 if that's how much I wanted from their personal loan so it looks
like I'm already pre-approved for those rates and I didn't have to do anything I
just logged into my American Express account and I had a pop up with that app
so if the research I did on American Express personal loans I found out that
the money that you're borrowing from them and how long you're planning on
paying it back doesn't really determine your rate as much as your
Oh score does so with them it doesn't really matter how much money you're
borrowing or how long you're planning on paying the money back they just care
about what your credit score is in determining the final interest rate that
you're gonna get for that loan the only thing I didn't like was that their terms
only went up to thirty six months so if you needed a lot of money and you wanted
60 months you can't do it with them but out of the three lenders that I'm
talking about American Express was the best when it came to borrowing a little
bit of money for a little bit of time because they're the only ones that will
do it thirty five hundred dollar minimum and they even offer the 12-month loan
payback period so in my opinion American Express is the best option if you're
just borrowing a little bit of money for a little bit of time also if you are
interested in any of these personal loans that I'm talking about I will link
to their websites in my description so that you can find out more about them
and if you're curious I did check Discover Card for one of their personal
loans because I know that they do them too but their rate came in about six
points higher than any of the other guys so I didn't even look any further into
them I mean seriously it was a really bad break from them but if you want to
check them out go ahead I did they just didn't come out with a rate that was
good enough for me next on my list of personal loans is called sofa which
stands for social finance now these guys have only been around since 2011 but
don't let that fool you because they've changed the industry with the way their
business model works they've taken everything that we don't like about
traditional loans and they've seriously fixed it with their business model they
advertise from the very beginning that they don't have any hidden fees that
they have low rates and that they have really good terms so their big thing is
that they don't hide anything from their customers everything is what it is with
social finance and that's awesome because you know exactly what you're
gonna be getting so if I off our student loans mortgages and personal loans so if
you're in the market for any of these types of loans so fight is one that you
really want to check out so fight advertises that they don't even charge
an origination fee on mortgages which is typically about 1% that you're just
giving up whenever you get one of those loans and traditionally if you don't
have 20% down on a house then you have to pay mortgage insurance but so Phi it
doesn't even charge you mortgage insurance with one of their loans if you
have less than 20% social finance is kind of the new way to get loans and
they've proven it because they've actually lend it out over 30 billion
dollars so far they'll even give you half a quarter percent discount if you
have more one loan with them - and they even offer
what they call unemployment protection which means if you lose your job they'll
actually freeze your payments temporarily until you find a new job so
that's kind of nice - so currently Sophie offers personal loans from about
five and a half percent to fourteen percent and they'll let you borrow
between 5000 and $100,000 and then you can choose to pay them back between
three and seven years one thing I did notice though is that their loans
fluctuate based on how long you keep them and how much you're financing so
keep that in mind if you're gonna consider sofa so I found that their best
rates are actually the 36 month terms with lower amounts borrowed so just keep
that in mind so for instance their lowest advertised rate at five and a
half percent that one's only gonna work for you if you do a 36 month loan with
them but if you do go with the longer term they still have really good rates
you're just only gonna get the best rate if you go with the 36 month term and I
also notice that they're not as picky about what you're using the money for
and that's a good thing because a lot of the other lenders are really picky when
it comes to what you're using the money for so just keep that in mind - so in my
opinion I think that everybody should at least consider sofa if they're looking
for a personal loan really the only problem I have with them is that their
minimum amount you can borrow is $5,000 which American Express had at 3,500
bucks so it's a lot easier to get a little bit of money from American
Express than it is with sofa so the minimum amount was the only thing that
bothered me about them everything else seemed to be extremely competitive and
really good in my opinion no I do have their link in the description and I
think they give you some sort of a bonus by using my affiliate link so go ahead
and use that link if you are actually looking for a personal loan from them
now last on my list of personal loans is called light stream by SunTrust Bank
these guys are actually big bank owned because of SunTrust but they offer some
of the best rates and the best terms that I found from all of these different
companies and they do advertise that there'll be any competitors rate by a
tenth of a point as long as it's the same type of loan light streams personal
loan rates are about 3 to 14 percent which is incredible and they'll also
loan between 5,000 and $100,000 their term length ranges from 24 to a hundred
and forty four months which is actually 12 years if you really wanted to max it
out that long I would advise though that you don't go with 144 months if you're
going with a personal loan but that's just my opinion
now don't let any of these numbers deceive you with light stream loans
because everything fluctuates depending on what you're doing with the loan how
much money you're borrowing and how long you're planning on paying it back for so
it's not like you can borrow the minimum $5,000 and finance it over a hundred and
forty four months everything that lights dream offers is dependent upon their
predetermined categories but don't let that deceive you because their rates are
incredible I found with light stream that if you borrow between about ten
thousand dollars and twenty five thousand dollars and you borrow it for
24 to 36 months then you're gonna get the best rates that they offer and I
found that the lower amounts of money that you borrow from them actually have
higher rates than borrowing more money so if you do want to borrow less than
$10,000 then I'd suggest going with the other guys instead and I did notice with
light stream that their lowest advertised rates are for auto loans only
so don't expect to get a 3% rate if you're consolidating your credit cards I
found that most of the categories ranged from about 6 to 8% an interest so just
keep that in mind if you're looking at these guys now out of these three
different companies that I looked into I actually ended up going with light
stream loans I probably would have preferred to go with social finance but
I ended up going with light stream loans because they actually came in about a
point and a half lower than the other guys did but that was for me personally
so you'll want to check all of these different lenders to see which rates
you're gonna end up qualifying for because I didn't have an origination fee
or anything like that I just went with whomever gave me the best rate and for
me at the time it happened to be light stream loans now these are the three
best picks that I found but feel free and commenting below if you know of any
personal loans that I didn't mention that actually have better rates so maybe
you do know of some better personal loans out there but these are the three
best that I found and that's from all the research that I did once again I'm
Jason with the honest finance Channel if you did find this information helpful
then feel free and subscribing to my channel or at least give the video a
like that's all