Beneficial Finance Review

My feelings about Beneficial are complicated because my situation was complicated when I first met them, back when I was mired down in credit card debt.  I'm not a compulsive shopper -- nor even much of a shopper at all -- but when I first moved into my condo years ago I wasn't making much and had scraped the bottom of the barrel just to move in.  Furnishing my place took credit cards and I wasn't able to make anything but the minimum payments for a while as the interest began to rack up.  No matter how I scrimped or tried over the years that followed, I kept falling behind.  In spite of this, I had kept up with my mortgage payments faithfully and my home had gone up dramatically in value so it was my equity that saved me from a desperate situation.

Enter, Beneficial

One day I received in the mail -- along with the usual bills and other stuff I didn't really want to look at -- a check for $7,000 from Beneficial and a promotional mailer explaining that all I had to do was cash and deposit that check to get this loan of $7,000.  I think I actually tried to do that but fortunately when these checks are signed and deposited, Beneficial contacts the depositor and requires them to visit the office, provide identification and sign something.  (For security reasons, this is important.)  I thought they were a tad aggressive about talking me into scrapping the original loan idea and opening up a bigger home equity loan instead but I'm glad now that I went along with it.  The interest and closing points were astronomical but with my credit rating at the time, no one else would have even bothered with me at all.  The loan cleared the decks on everything -- credit card debt, repayment of that original check for $7,000 plus my old mortgage with a bank -- and was set up on a semi-monthly payment schedule with automatic payments plus a Reward system whereby for every year with no late payments, my interest rate would be reduced.  I must say that the people at the Narragansett office in Chicago were very nice to me during our meetings regarding this loan.

Six Years Later

Like I say, I never really was a compulsive shopper.  Once I got all that debt cleared up, everything has been fine since.  I made it a point to continue to use credit cards in order to rebuild my credit rating which is now 780 (a darned sight better than the 364 it used to be!) and since I have never been late with a payment on my home equity loan, the interest rate has started to drop like a stone.  My payments are less than half of what they used to be and I've already paid off $20,000 of the loan's principal in the first six years of a 30-year fixed rate loan.

My ViewPoint

Because I have been careful, have kept my head above water, and was able to keep up with my payments, my relations with the people at Beneficial have been okay.  One thing that has bothered me a little is that nearly every month for several years now, they have phoned me "to see how things were going" and also to try to get me to refinance and start out with another loan.  At this point in my life, I don't want to screw around with more closing costs, paperwork, etc., especially with the interest rate going down every year anyway.  I have finally asked them to take me off their calling list and they seem to have complied.  Apparently, they have taken "No" for my final answer. 

I'm sorry to see that other people seem to have had serious (and probably valid) complaints with this financial organization.  Each borrower is different, likewise that person's situation, so it's hard to make a judgment about a lender like Beneficial whose bread and butter probably is the desperation of people who are in trouble.  For myself, I am giving them four stars because I would recommend them to another desperate person who had nowhere else to turn. 

Beneficial is not perfect and maybe not even close to it but then neither am I and they really saved me from the financial ruin that would have resulted if I had tried to retire with all that credit card debt.  They took a chance on me when anybody else would have showed me to the door and I'm not about to forget that.  In these stressful times, we all suffer nightmares from time to time, but one of my worst nightmares is about what things would have been like if Beneficial had never entered the scene when they did.