Every (darn) thing you need to know about LightStream personal loans from $5,000 to $100,000.
We’re going to tell you everything you need to know about LightStream personal loans. We’ve spent years in the lending industry and we track dozens of lenders. We want to use that experience to help you make sense of LightStream’s policies so you can decide whether you should use them to consolidate your credit card debt, make a big purchase, or cover a monthly shortfall in your finances.
You may or may not have ever heard of LightStream. They are a financial services technology company that is owned and operated by Truist Bank. Truist bank is found mainly in the eastern United States. These are the states where they have branches. But LightStream offers loans online and so is not bound by Truist’s branch network.
Let’s look at the details of LightStream’s personal loans.
The first thing we are going to look at is how much you can borrow. LightStream doesn’t offer loans less than $5,000, so they aren’t going to be the option for filling a short-term emergency. If you are looking for a more substantial amount of money, LightStream lends up to $100,000. That is about as high as any personal loan.
LightStream’s terms range from 2 to 12 years. Twelve years is the longest term I have seen from the lenders we track. That is a long time to be in debt. But I can understand why you might need a term that long if you are borrowing $100,000. Longer terms means lower monthly payments, but paying more in interest over time. If you can avoid it, you don’t want to be paying interest that long. Whatever the term length, try and make extra principal payments in the first year of your loan. That will save you a lot of money on interest and help you get out of debt faster.
LightStream caters to people with Good-to-Excellent credit.
You would probably struggle to get approved if your credit score was not higher than 680. But, that’s just a guideline. In determining your eligibility, LightStream will look at your credit score, but they will also look at other things like your payment history, debt-to-income ratio, utilization, amount and type of income, bank transaction data, and other financial information. Your particular mixture of these factors will determine if you are approved, for how much, and at what rate.
Now let’s look their APRs. LightStream’s lowest APR is 9.39% and their highest is 25.99%. There are a lot of lenders with lower bottom rates, but only a few with lower top rates. So LightStream has a more narrow band than most.
If you are looking for a way to shave a little off of your APR, LightStream does offer a 0.5% discount if you sign up for autopay. You must sign up when you accept the loan. If you sign up after you have signed the loan agreement, you will not get the discount. I like the fact that they want to incentivize people to sign up for autopay. Autopay is one way to ensure that you never miss a payment.
Somewhat unusually, LightStream will not charge an origination fee on their personal loans. Just in terms of context, I would say about half of the lenders out there do not charge an origination fee. That means that the full cost of the loan will be wrapped up in their interest rate.
LightStream does not charge any fees if you are late on your monthly payment. Most lenders will charge a late fee. Those fees range between $10 and $39. So, it’s notable that LightStream will not charge a fee at all.
LightStream will accept a cosigner, but they call them co-applicants.
A cosigner is someone who agrees to pay off your loan if you fail to repay it. Adding a cosigner or a co-applicant to a loan can often help you get approved. This is especially true if the cosigner has a stronger profile than you do.
If you are using the loan to consolidate credit card balances or other debt, LightStream will *not* directly pay off your other creditors with the proceeds of the loan. I like it when companies will do that because they understand that the loan is meant to replace your other debts and not just stack on top of them. That means they are accounting for the fact that the new loan will not make your debt-to-income ratio worse. That should make it easier to be approved by them. The fact that LightStream does not offer this service suggests that they aren’t serious about their borrowers using their loans for debt consolidation.
What can you use a LightStream personal loan for?
LightStream does not limit how you use the money. Because it’s a personal loan that is unsecured, you are free to use the funds however you would like. In fact, their website mention a curiously broad range of uses. You can see it includes everything from swimming pools to time shares, from horses to aircraft. But these aren’t common reasons to take out a personal loan. From my independent research, I have found that the most common uses of a personal loan like LightStream include:credit card consolidation, debt consolidation, home improvement, moving expenses, major purchases, life events like marriages, funerals, having a baby or adopting, home repairs, vehicle repairs, or unexpected emergency.
So, let’s summarize LightStream’s personal loans.
LightStream has higher loan amounts. They are clearly not designed for covering a short-term emergency. They are more interested in covering significant issues or purchases for people with Good-to-Excellent credit. Don’t be surprised if you find it difficult to be approved by them. Their APRs are actually pretty good. They don’t offer some features I would expect, but they do offer others. Finally, I am pleased by their lack of fees. I think LightStream is a pretty good lender, but unless you have pristine credit, you might struggle to get approved.
And after all, for many people, the most important thing about a loan is whether you can get the money you need with the best terms. That’s why we always recommend that before you accept a loan, you should shop around. Find the best deal. Get three to four offers before you make a decision on which loan to take. At The Yukon Project, we’ve tried to make shopping around easy. If you visit our marketplace page, you can apply to any one of our other featured lenders. Behind the scenes, we will check your rate with up to 40 other lenders. Our partners use a soft credit check, so applying won’t hurt your credit score. We will show you all of the approved offers so you can pick the loan that’s best for you.
If you have any questions we didn’t cover, leave a comment below and we will try and answer it. If you found this video useful, please like it and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching.
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