Vicki Gunvalson, president & founder of Coto Insurance & Financial Services and Debt.com spokesperson on personal loans, joined Cheddar News to provide some tips on what to know about personal loans.

Vicki Gunvalson, president &amp; founder of Coto Insurance &amp; Financial Services and Debt.com spokesperson on personal loans, joined Cheddar News to provide some tips on what to know about personal loans.

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What to Know About Personal Loans

Inflation is making everything more expensive and that means more Americans are going into debt to make ends meet according to New York Federal Reserve American consumer debt reached $16.9 trillion 2022 balances are rising across all major categories like mortgage, auto loan and credit card debt. This is prompting many people to look for different ways to manage their finances. So today we're honing in on personal loans which is actually one of the fastest growing debt categories in the U. S. Joining me now is Vicki Gun Wilson, she's president and founder of Coto Insurance and Financial Services. She's also debt dot com spokesperson Vicki. So these personal loans, how do they work? So personal loans uh through this Covid so many people have lost their jobs had to take, you know their Visa credit cards up to the max, they're paying the minimum. Um working with debt dot com. People can actually consolidate their loans, get the interest rate uh possibly changed and get that debt paid off because that's just gonna be a monkey on their back. Personal loans are definitely an issue that's going to carry with them their whole life if they're just paying the minimum. So we believe that kind of taking a handle on this and just really um stop the charging if you can't afford it, don't charge. I know a lot of people are just having to do the basics, the food, the gas, things like that. But many people are charging things that they don't need and that's where we want to come in and really help people get in the budget, getting a payment plan and help people getting out of that spending model that they've been doing. So these loans who is eligible for these loans and how much can you actually pay in terms of interest rates? What are we talking about? Well a lot of people are paying 20 and 30% in interest, so we're trying to consolidate that and get that. Don't were able to negotiate with a lot of the credit card companies. Um I've been in financial services my whole life and fortunately I was raised by, you know, you don't, you don't put things on credit card and if you do you pay it off at the end of the month. My Children have that rule, I have that rule who can get those loans ideally you want to have a good credit score and the credit score is going to follow you your whole life so you want to make sure that you're not spending more than you need and personal loans are something that a lot of people have to do just to stay afloat right now. And where can you get these loans, are we talking about the big banks? Where can you get these loans? Are we talking about the big banks? Yeah. So you can go to debt dot com forward slash Vicki and we've got a lot of programs in there to assist people that are needing help. But many people go to the internet and that may or may not be the right thing to do. Some people go to their local bank uh they're taking re flies out on their house and paying the higher interest rates. So there's a lot of issues that we can help people with. So you don't get caught with this large debt, you know for a long time. And what's the average length of time that you have, you just mentioned not getting caught with this long this debt for a long time. But what's the average time that someone has to pay this back without getting these huge fees? Well if you're only paying the minimum it could take 20 or 30 years to get that debt down depending upon what you're paying what your interest rate is that we've seen interest rates as high as 2030%. So we want to get that down under 10 at least. Um and then get into a plan. So if you don't have a plan you know you're gonna be caught with a real problem. It's gonna keep snowballing words to live by. If you don't have a plan you're gonna get caught with a big problem. Thanks so much Vicky gal vinson President and founder of Coto Insurance and financial services and debt dot com spokesperson