EPS 50 - What is a consolidation loan?

Ever feel like you’re juggling seven due dates, five interest rates, and one constant headache? In this episode, Jerry breaks down what a consolidation loan actually is (spoiler: it’s usually just a personal loan), how it works, and why it can simplify your life—especially when credit card debt starts feeling unmanageable.

We’ll cover unsecured vs. secured options, how your credit score impacts rates, why credit unions may offer better pricing, and what to watch for before you sign anything. Plus, a quick tour of what’s new on PinkMoneyPodcast.com—including companion posts, “postcards,” and easy ways to share the show.

TAGS:  

• Consolidation loan
• Personal loan
• Credit cards
• Interest rates
• Credit score
• Unsecured debt
• Secured loan
• HELOC
• Home equity loan
• Credit union vs bank
• Financial literacy
• Money management
• Debt payoff plan
• Budgeting
• Avoiding debt traps
• Lending basics
• Holiday finances
• LGBTQ+ money
• Pink Money Podcast

💬 Have a question or comment? Contact Jerry here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The following podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Remember to seek competent tax, legal, and investment advice that is unique to your personal situation. Hey everybody, and welcome to the Pink Bunny Podcast. I'm your host, Jerry Williams, and we talk about all things related to money from a queer perspective. And first off, happy holidays. I hope everybody's enjoying their holiday season so far and that it's not freezing ass cold wherever you are. I know a lot of the country seems to have gotten some terrible weather, but even down here, I mean, it's in Texas, we've got colder weather than we normally get, but I you know, I'm okay with it. As long as it doesn't snow and ice, I'm okay with it, really, because that's the last thing that I want. I mean, I grew up in cold and ice, and I've really had my fill of it. I mean, it's one thing if you want to go vacation in it, but it's another thing if you have to deal with it on a day in and day out basis. And like I said, I'm done with all that. I like the warm weather. I don't want to be boiled to death, but um, I just prefer warm weather, more my speed at this point. But anyway, shifting topics here. You know, someone asked me a question, and I thought that I would explain it because, you know, sometimes I think we forget that not everybody, of course, knows everything that we do, right? And we just sort of take it for granted sometimes as we go through life because we know it and it's just a part of our thought processes. It's in our brain and we know how things work, but other people don't. They just don't know that. And how they don't know it is because they've never had experience with it. And how do they learn it? Usually, you know, we teach it to each other, and that's how we all learn, right? But you just can't forget that not everybody again knows as much as we do about whatever topic it is, and that certainly is my situation here because like I said, sometimes I do take it for granted that people don't know everything that I learned sometimes long ago, but that's okay. That's what I'm here to buy to provide not only advice, guidance, and education, but enlightenment and empowerment is to the greatest degree that I can. And you know, this is podcasts that I say is geared towards the LGBTQ community, but it doesn't mean nobody that's outside of that, you know, whole rainbow can't learn anything. You know, hopefully, no matter what your persuasion is, you can learn and you know enjoy this podcast as much as the next person. So I I hope that's the case. And I'll throw that in, you know, like and pass it along to other people too. So anyway, get let me get back to the consolidation loan. So that's the whole reason that I decided to do this podcast because someone asked me, well, they said, What is a consolidation loan? And I said, Well, in a nutshell nuts, nutshell, what a consolidation loan is, is just a personal loan. So different banks call different things, you know, whatever, but essentially it's just a personal loan to you, and you just get a lump sum of money and use it for whichever way you want. Consolidation, meaning normally you have a wide variety of debts like credit cards, personal loans as well, or some kind of unsecured debt. Maybe you owe somebody some money or whatever, you got to get your car fixed, what have you. So you take out a personal loan and then you do whatever you need to do with it. Some banks, I don't know if they still do this, but uh remember years ago, some banks would actually just ask you, you know, what you do what do you do, what do you intend to pay off? And you'd give them a list of let's say credit cards, and then they would mail the checks directly to them. I don't know if they do that anymore, but that was how they used to do it way back when. But it doesn't matter. Again, once you get the money, then you do what you're supposed to do with it ideally. And it let's say you got a whole bunch of let's say seven or eight credit cards, and they're all different amounts, different interest rates, different due dates, and it's just the juggling of them that's kind of you know become difficult. So you get one loan, one lump sum, you pay it off on one date, and you get you know one single amount. So it just simplifies your life and makes it easier for you to pay this off. I mean, because it's unsecured, meaning there's nothing backing the loan like a car or house or whatever, you know, some kind of collateral, the interest rates are gonna be a little higher. So little meaning, I don't know, it depends on your credit score, right? If you have good credit, the interest rate will be okay. If your credit is not so great, then you're gonna pay a higher interest rate. And that's just money you're gonna lose because interest, as we know, unless they're paying it to you, is money you're paying it to them, and you might as well just throw it out the window, set it on fire, whatever, because it's just money you're giving away. So ideally, we don't want to have debt because again, it's not doing us any favor. But it is what it is. If you do do the consolidation loan, however, and you do have some collateral of some type, maybe you do have a car sitting there that's paid off and you can use that as collateral. Uh, maybe there's other things you have. I don't know, maybe jewelry or if your bank will take it, and maybe you, you know, I don't know, whatever you got that they may accept as collateral, maybe stock, whatever. Anyway, once it's secured, if it's secured, then typically you're gonna get a better interest rate. But if you don't have that, you just go with the unsecured loan. And like I said, if it's a consolidation loan, you want to bring all your debt together and pay it off and get in one lump sum, then go ahead and do it. You just have to make sure that you pay that off on time, you know, like you normally would. And if you can pay it off earlier than that, hallelujah, because you're just saving money. So you get solicitations. I know I get solic solicit solicitations all the time. Oh my god, I can't talk today. So from lots of different companies, you know, from ABC Big Lender, and you know, they're pitching their consolidation loan and/or credit card, whatever. But you just really want to shop around before you really take any loan because you want to make sure you're getting the best rate. And if you have a bank, then you can obviously check with them, especially if you have a working relationship with them anyway. That's where you do your banking, you have your checking account, savings account, whatever. If you have a credit union, they may be the better place to go take a look because credit unions are membership owned versus a bank which has shareholders. So both entities are profit-making, but one is the benefit for the shareholders versus one is a membership-owned organization. So once you become a member, then we all essentially own it. And their rates are typically better and lower. So you can do at a credit union what you would normally do through a bank. I mean, you can get a car loan, you can get a mortgage, a small business loan, what have you. It's just, again, a smaller institution. Uh, they may be more technologically limited. I mean, I belong to a credit union, and weirdly, you cannot make deposits through their own ATM. It's really strange to me. I mean, you can only do it directly into the bank or you know, through the drive-in. It's just nuts. But whatever. Anyway, plus, there's not usually as many of them. You know, there's a handful versus let's say if you're banking at Wells Fargo or Chase or whatever, you know, there's one practically every other corner. Anyway, so your credit union may be the better rate, better place to get the better rate, and you just want to shop around and make sure you get the best rate. And one thing I'll say about any institution, I'm just always a firm believer in creating long-term relationships. So once you start using a bank or a credit union or both, you know, sometimes different institutions do different things, so it's good to have one or the other or both. So you can have multiple banks if you will, for whatever reasons. But anyway, create a long-term relationship with the this institution and use them on a regular basis because it makes it easier on you. And when you do go to, let's say, get a loan and they are like, well, this person's been a member for seven years, you know, so that's look that looks good on you, right? And because you've been a member in good standing or a customer in good standing, then that looks favorable on you, especially if it becomes down to a judgment situation where should we give them a loan or not, you know, they may look more favorable on you again because you've been a good customer over the years. Similarly, if you do really business with anybody, and that goes for mechanics and doctors and everybody, I just believe that you should create a long-term relationship because it's going to benefit you. The more you know these people, the better relationships you have, the less likely you're gonna be taken advantage of, and you know these people, they know you, and you just have an easier route when you uh do business with the same people all the time. Insurance companies, the whole gamut, you know, to the greatest degree you can. And you don't really want to shop around constantly. You can, of course, but you know, you don't want to have 10 different banks unless there's some reason to have 10 different banks. I mean, if you got a whole scat of money and you have opened different accounts at different banks because you're trying to keep it under the$250,000 FDIC limit, okay, that's maybe more understandable. But if you're doing that all by yourself, again, you might want to talk with your banker and figure out the right types of registration that you can have so that you can keep your accounts um fully insured, but maybe the registrations are slightly different, like you have a payable on death, a transfer on death, or a joint account, or you have a trust, etc. All of those still qualify and they qualify in different ways to be covered by FDIC insurance. So that's a little bit off topic. But just circling back to the whole consolidation thing, a consolidation loan, personal loan, you could even have secured, unsecured, you could have it secured by your home, you could have a second mortgage, you could do home equity line of credit, you could do a home equity loan, both again secured by your residence. Line of credit means kind of like a credit card, it's open-ended. You can borrow different amounts, you know, maybe you get a$10,000 line and you use$3,000 for whatever vacation. You could use, I don't know,$5,000 for car repairs, whatever it is. And then loan is what it is, it's a fixed amount. You borrow$10,000,$15,000,$30,000, whatever it is, and then you repay that over whatever the course of time is. You typically have, I want to say it's I could be wrong here, but like 15 years, I think is max, but it really depends. Better to get that directly from your bank. But anyway, the loan is fixed, a line of credit is more open-ended, depends. And these days, different places do different things because the economy is kind of strange and has been strange for a while. But anywho, that's really it. I can go on and on about different things, but I don't want to. I want to keep it just really to this. I'm gonna talk a little bit about things you can find on the website, though, that are a little bit new. If you've been to the website, pinkmoneypodcast.com, you'll notice there's a few different tabs you can click around on, take a look at, things that I post on the blog, which are totally random, anything that comes to my mind, really. But there's also companion posts, which I'll post it things that are explainers, as I call them, that are going they go into much greater detail, or they explain things more broadly than maybe I talked about on the episode. So maybe I wanted to go into greater detail, or I wanted to add some meat to the bone, or I forgot something, or whatever it is. So you can take a look at the companion posts, and I think that's a good way to bring the two together and go, oh, okay, that makes more sense to me. But there's also times that I've noticed where there's something that I want to explain, but it depends on the complexity of it. And some things just lend themselves to needing only the more salient points. So if there's something that I feel like it's good to highlight, but I don't want to really go too deeply into the woods because there's too much to it. Excuse me, took a drink of water. Then I created what are called postcards. I call them postcards. So it just brings the highlights, the main points to the surface. So you can look at this, learn a little bit more about it. If you want to go do a deep dive, go ahead. Learn it to your your heart's delight. But some of these things don't apply to everybody, so I just have touched on them, but I don't want to go into any great detail. But if you want to learn a little bit, there's enough that you could hold a brief conversation with somebody. But if they want to go way deep, then again, let them go way deep. You want to go way deep, go ahead, go way deep. But postcards, I think, are just little helpful tidbits that you can just use and go, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. I got it, got it, got it. So I don't have a whole bunch out there, but I'll be posting some more, it just depends on what the topic is. And just little brief takeaways, like I said. But there's also homage to people that we love. And I've been posting things about people that come to mind me. You know, I did a whole thing about Matthew Shepherd because his birthday was December 1st. So there's other people on there that I have thought about, and I think that their presence in this world always has done good, and or it was great that they were here, meaning that maybe they've gone. But there's people that are still here, and hallelujah for them, because again, they mean something and they bring light to our world, and I'm really grateful for them. But there's lots of things out there, including Jerry's playlist that doesn't have anything to do with anything, it's just stuff I like. Um, I used to post, if you've been a long-term listener, some stuff music on the end of the podcast that kind of became a copyright issue. So I just go ahead, went ahead and created these pod lists, pod lists, these playlists, and they're just again random stuff. I think there's one out there right now that I did for Christmas, one that either I posted or I'm going to post. I have to double check, but it's gonna be like a new year's one. But anyway, so there's a lot out there on the website, and hopefully you find it useful, fun, interesting. Share it with others on the about page. There's also a what I call a show card. And so let's say you're having lunch with somebody and you this you you're you bring up the podcast in your conversation and you want to share it with them, you can go to the about page. There's a little show card, it has a QR code, and you can share it with them that way. Easy. So there's just a lot out there, some things that I keep trying to add, but hopefully, again, it's all in the vein of being interesting, fun, and enlightening and empowers you because those are the main points of my mission here. I think that's really about all I have to say today. Just gonna keep it short and brief for the most part. And again, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a great new year, but I think I'll post at least one, maybe two more episodes prior to the end of the year. One for sure, I guess so, because we're kind of in the mid-month. So there'll be one more that I'm gonna post before year end anyway. And other than that, leave it there, and I will talk to you next time.