Many borrowers think they have found the perfect loan — the 125. But you should be cautious when considering this product.
A 125 loan is named for the amount of equity you can pull out of your home, which is usually 125%. Some of the loan is secured by your home and some of it isn’t, making it a mixed loan type. The portion that is unsecured causes your interest rate to be higher than with a fully secured home equity loan.
Many borrowers turn to 125 loans because they can simply make one payment to their lender instead of several payments to many lenders. The single payment is often lower than the total of all the payments it replace, due to differences in interest rates. The rates are often much better than credit card rates, but if you roll other loans in, such as student loans, you may actually be raising some rates on your debt.
For example, you may have a car loan with a balance of $11,000. You have an interest rate of 8.5% and 4 years left of payments. You roll the note into your 125 loan, which has a rate of 11.5%. You’ve actually raised your interest rate.
If you roll in a credit card with a $12,000 balance and an interest...