Personal loans are borrowed money that can be used for large purchases, debt consolidation, emergency expenses and much more. These loans are paid back in monthly installments over the course of typically two to six years, but it can take longer depending on your circumstances and how diligent you are with making payments.

© PeopleImages/Getty Images
Birdseye view of desk

Here are the top six reasons to get a personal loan and when they make sense:

Load Error

1. Debt consolidation.
2. Alternative to a payday loan.
3. Home remodeling.
4. Moving costs.
5. Emergency expenses.
6. Appliance purchases.
7. Vehicle financing.
8. Wedding expenses.
9. Vacation costs.

How personal loans work

Once you get approved for a personal loan, the funds you receive will be disbursed in a

THE DEFINITE REQUIREMENTS

Mortgage rates are flirting with another record low — and that means the boom in refinancing has not yet finished.

© Getty Images
Americans are rushing to refinance, but homeowners shouldn’t necessarily expect mortgage rates to continue hitting record lows.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 2.87% for the week ending Oct. 8, down one basis point from the week prior, Freddie Mac (FMCC)reported Thursday. A few weeks ago, the average rate for the 30-year loan fell to an all-time low of 2.86%.

Load Error

The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage rose by a basis point to an average of 2.37%, while the 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage dropped one basis point to 2.89% on average.

Mortgage rates usually roughly follow the direction of the 10-year Treasury note’s yield (BX:TMUBMUSD10Y) which trended upward this week. That’s not what happened this week, though.

“Typically, Treasury yields and mortgage rates have a close relationship, with

Half of all households who cut or temporarily halted their mortgage repayments at the height of the Covid-19 economic crisis are back to making full repayments.

During the national lockdown in March and April, banks agreed to let households whose incomes had reduced to either temporarily stop, or reduce repayments on their home loans, a move that was commonly referred to as taking a repayments ‘holiday’.

At its peak in June around 7 per cent of all home loans were on deferred or reduced payment plans with their banks, according to data from credit reporting bureau Centrix.

But Mark Rowley, Centrix chief operating officer, said that by the end of September, the number of mortgages on deferral had halved from its June peak to 3.5 per cent of all home loans.

READ MORE:
* Bank profits cut nearly in half by Covid-19 economic crisis
* ‘Staggering’ number of households behind

September 30, 2020

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.4 million small businesses have either closed of suspended operations according to a study by Oxxford Information Technology Ltd. It is expected that as many as four million small businesses could be forced to shut down permanently by the end of the year, or about 13 percent of the country’s small businesses.

Richfield’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) is doing everything it can to provide financial assistance to the city’s small businesses as they try and weather the global health crisis. The authority has authorized a second round of small business forgivable loans.

“Businesses of all shapes and sizes are seeing a drastic reduction in income during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explained Richfield Chamber of Commerce Chairman Greg Worthen. “Richfield was one of the first cities in Minnesota willing to help its small businesses through this crisis in the form of a

The mixture of home loans to SME loans is broadly the same with the value of home loans falling to $160 billion in August from $167 billion in July and deferred SME loans falling to $53 billion from $55 billion over the same period.

Lender level data still shows Bank of Queensland as the big lender with the highest proportion of deferred loans overall accounting for 12 per cent of its total book. BoQ has frozen repayments of 11 per cent of its home loan book and 21 per cent of its SME loan book.

Earlier this week the bank announced it was ramping up provisions for bad debts to $175 million after taking into account the worsening impact of the virus crisis.

ANZ has the highest proportion of home loans on deferral with the data showing repayments on 12 per cent of its home loan as frozen. ANZ CEO

LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England (BoE) set out proposals on Wednesday to end unfair advantages some banks have in calculating how much capital to hold for mortgages in a bid to increase competition.

Some bigger banks can use their own internal models for determining the risk weightings and therefore capital levels for home loans they have granted.

Typically this has resulted in lower capital levels than under the so-called standardised approach to risk weightings set out by regulators that many smaller lenders have to use.

The BoE’s banks supervision arm, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), said it wanted to reduce risks that stem from “inappropriately” low risk weightings that can be thrown up by in-house models.

“For those firms whose risk weights may increase as a result of these proposals, and where capital requirements are not already determined by other capital measures (e.g. leverage), there would be costs

Personal loans or credit cards, which is a better financial product for making big purchases?

By: Hitesh Khan/

Image credit: Hloom via Flickr

Should you use a personal loan or credit card when making major purchases? Assuming that you have good credit and can qualify to borrow money, here are some things to consider when choosing between the two financial products.

Best interest would determine the financial product you should use for big purchases

The first thing most people look at when borrowing money is the amount of interest being charged. It usually isn’t a problem to find personal loans with fixed rates. Having a fixed interest rate means there won’t be any surprises when you receive your loan statement. You’ll always know exactly how much to set aside each month for your loan payments.

Credit card interest rates sometimes fluctuate. While you may initially be offered a low introductory

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that the government’s top priorities in any new economic relief package should be to provide affordable loans to small businesses and further support for millions of Americans still unemployed.

With the prospects for any new federal aid package appearing dim, members of the Senate Banking Committee pressed both officials to list improvements that could be quickly made in the nearly $3 trillion in support that Congress has passed to fight the pandemic-induced recession that has nearly 11 million people still jobless.

Democrats on the panel urged Mnuchin, one of the administration’s top negotiators, to work harder to persuade Republicans in Congress to raise the amount of money they would be willing to support in a new bill. And Republicans urged Democratic members to consider a lower amount that might clear both the House and Senate