Vision Credit Education, Inc.

Reducing your interest rates can lower your required monthly payments while speeding up debt repayment. It can save you thousands in finance charges.

Requesting Lower Interest Rates

Believe it or not, you can earn lower interest rates by demonstrating financial strength. There is a way to prove to your creditors that you deserve lower rates. Follow these steps:

1. You can send much larger payments in than the required minimum payments. Usually at least 2-3 months of accelerated repayment will suffice.
2. Ask for a lower interest rate. Mention the better rates that you have been offered, focusing on the permanent rates rather than promotional rates.
3. If the creditor balks, threaten to transfer the balance.
4. If your request is denied, start back at step 1.

Even if you receive an interest rate reduction, you may still be able to get it even lower by repeating the process. If they still won’t budge, then you can probably do better by moving the debt to another creditor that offers lower interest rates.

Debt Management

If you have high debt balances, you might want to ask your financial counselor for help managing your debt. We at Vision Credit can talk with you about various options for managing debt.

• Self-directed plan: We may be able to help you develop a plan for repayment where you use various self-directed strategies to focus on individual accounts more directly. We can help you with figuring out how to approach debt repayment. This is largely a process of targeting certain creditors for accelerated repayment, and thereby creating opportunities to earn lower interest rates as discussed above.
• Debt management program: You may find that enrolling in a debt management program may give you a better chance at repayment. We can discuss the pros and cons of a debt management program so that you can know how creditors provide benefits. Benefits can include reduced interest rates and lower payments in addition to a reduction in many fees.

Find out why the financial counselors at Vision Credit are among the most highly trained and experienced in the industry. We can show you the best ways to get lower interest rates.

Debt Consolidation Loans

A debt consolidation loan can reduce your interest rates. Most utilize the equity in your home to secure lower interest rates.

There are four warnings about debt consolidation loans:

1. You must have substantial equity in order to qualify.
2. Your credit score must be good or excellent.
3. You need job security or risk losing your home.
4. 70% of those using debt consolidation loans fall back deeper in debt within 2 years.

For these reasons, most debtors cannot reasonably expect to get out of debt using debt consolidation loans. Instead, you may be better off utilizing one of the other options for getting lower interest rates on your debt so that you can pay everything off faster.