Should You Use Lending Club to get a Short-Term Personal Loan?

Peer-to-peer lending services such as Lending Club are growing by leaps and bounds. Consumers are using them because they can get better interest rate for personal loans than they would by borrowing from a local bank and investors are using lending club to get a great rate of return on their money. Using a peer-to-peer lending website is still a new experience for most borrowers, but doing so might allow you get a loan with much better terms and rates than you would from a local bank.

Is the experience of getting a personal loan better than that of going through a real bank? Here’s the story of Matt Jabs from Debt Free Adventure about his experience getting a loan from Lending Club. After three of his credit cards raised their interest rates because of “the bad economy”, so Jabs looked into using Lending Club to consolidate his high interest credit card debt into a lower fixed-term loan.

Jabs considered the interest rates, origination fees and found that e would save himself over $500 by the time he had paid off his loans. Jabs’ story covers he details of this process, including how he saved 10% on one card. You can read Jabs’ full story here.

Lending Club has a lot of benefits for borrowers. Your interest rate and term of the loan is fixed, so there will be no surprises about your payment. Unlike a credit card debt that might drag on forever, you’ll have an end in sight with Lending Club that provides you a specific payoff date. Having an end in sight can be a major motivator in helping pay off debt. With Lending Club, there’s also no prepayment penalty, so you can pay off your loan whenever you’d like. You also can’t add to the debt over time so that your balance balloons.

Currently borrowers with great credit can get personal loans at an interest rate of 7.89%. Borrowers with lower credit ratings will typically pay interest rates between 8% and 15%, much lower than what you would be charged with a high-interest credit card.

If you’re interested in borrowing on a personal loan through Lending Club, visit their website.