I didn’t take out a personal loan because I wanted to. I took one out because I was drowning in credit card debt at 24% interest and needed a way to stop the bleeding.
After my divorce, I had $40,000 in debt spread across a home equity line, credit cards, and medical bills. The credit cards were eating me alive — most of my monthly payment was going straight to interest. A consolidation loan gave me one payment, a lower rate, and a finish line I could actually see.
That’s the context for everything I write about personal loans here. I’m not reviewing them as financial products. I’m talking about them as tools that either help you get out of debt or dig you deeper in, depending on how you use them.
My Experience
- How I’m Paying Off $40,000 in Debt — With the Actual Numbers — The full breakdown: what I owed, what I was paying, how consolidation changed the math, and where I stand now.
- How I Broke My Spending Habits — A loan can restructure your debt, but it doesn’t fix the habits that created it. Here’s what I changed.
Personal Loan Guides
- Best Personal Loans for Debt Consolidation — What to look for when you’re combining multiple debts into one payment.
- Best Personal Loans for Bad Credit — What’s actually available when your score is low, and what the rates really look like.
- Compare Personal Loan Lenders — Side-by-side comparison of rates, terms, and requirements.
A Word of Caution
A personal loan is not free money. It’s restructured debt. If you consolidate $8,000 in credit card debt into a personal loan and then run the credit cards back up, you now have the loan and the credit card debt. I’ve heard that story too many times.
The loan only works if you fix the spending that created the debt in the first place. For me, that meant finding $600 a month I was wasting and redirecting it to debt payoff. The loan gave me better math. Changing my habits gave me results.
If you’re considering a personal loan, make sure you’re solving the problem — not just rearranging it.
— Thomas