Can you repay a personal loan early without a penalty?

Yes, you can get a personal loan with a credit score of 550. You could consider getting a secured personal loan, applying for an unsecured personal loan with a co-signer, borrowing from family and friends, and checking with local credit unions which usually have a lower requirement over credit score.

It’s very difficult to get an unsecured personal loan with a credit score under 550 on your own, without the help of a co-signer whose credit score is higher. Even the loans with the most lenient approval standards require a credit score of 580. The personal loans with the lowest minimum credit score requirements are from LendingPoint (580+ score required) and Avant (600+).

So pursuing one of these alternative methods can help increase your chances of getting the funding you need.

How to Get Personal Loans for a Credit Score Under 550

Get a secured personal loan

A secured personal loan requires collateral. So you’ll have to put something of value on the line – money in an account or certificate of deposit, for example – that the lender can keep if you default. But your odds of approval will be high, since there’s little risk to the lender.

Apply for an unsecured personal loan with a co-signer

Applying for an unsecured personal loan with a co-signer lets you use someone else’s high credit score to boost your approval chances. The co-signer promises to pay the loan back if you can’t. Only some personal loan providers offer a co-signer option. Some examples are Citizens Bank, PNC and SoFi.

Borrow from family/friends

These people will likely be more sympathetic to your situation and will not care as much what your credit score is. They also won’t be able to do a hard pull of your credit and damage your score further. Depending on the person from whom you borrow, you might get much better terms than you would from a traditional lender.

See if local credit unions will consider you

According to the credit bureau Experian, some credit unions will offer unsecured personal loans even to people with bad credit. That’s due to credit unions having a more personal connection with their customers and being not-for-profit organizations.

One non-loan way to finance purchases with bad credit is through a credit card. However, credit cards for bad credit are not ideal. Secured credit cards require a security deposit that becomes your credit limit, so that essentially means you’re not borrowing (or at least you’re borrowing from yourself). And unsecured cards for bad credit have high rates and fees.

You can see your odds of getting approved for a personal loan without hurting your credit score by using WalletHub’s free pre-qualification tool. But if your expense isn’t especially urgent, it may be worth waiting a few months to improve your credit score.

Personal loans affect your credit score in the short-term and in the long-term. In the short-term, a personal loan may damage your score because it causes a hard credit inquiry and increases your debt load. But in the long-term, a personal loan can either help or hurt your credit, depending largely on whether or not you pay the bills on time. Ultimately, it’s up to you how much impact the personal loan will have.... read full answer

How a Personal Loan Affects Your Credit Score:

• Does temporary damage with an initial hard inquiry. When you first apply for a personal loan, your credit score will immediately take a small hit. That’s because applying for a personal loan triggers a hard inquiry into your credit history. But this shouldn’t drop your score by more than 5 points or so, and you should be able to bounce back quickly.
• Adds to your overall debt. If you’re approved for a personal loan, you will immediately have a higher debt load, which may cause your credit score to drop in the short-term. That’s because the more debt you have, the riskier it is for banks and credit unions to lend to you.
• Reports to the major credit bureaus monthly. The banks, credit unions and online lenders that issue personal loans report payment information to the major credit bureaus on a monthly basis. If you make on-time payments, you can expect your score to increase. But if you are late or don’t pay altogether, your score will drop.
• Improves your credit mix. Proving yourself capable of managing multiple types of loans and lines of credit responsibly is good for your credit score. It shows you can be trusted to repay what you borrow in a variety of situations. So if you only have one or two other types of accounts on your credit report, such as credit cards or student loans, your score may benefit in the long run from getting the personal loan.
• Could help reduce credit utilization. Personal loans give you a lump sum up front, which you pay back in monthly installments. This is different from a credit card, where you can borrow up to a certain amount any time you want. Credit cards are known as “revolving credit,” and a big part of your credit score is how much of your revolving credit you use up each month, or your “credit utilization ratio.” Personal loans don’t count toward this ratio, so if you use them to pay off revolving debt, you can lower your ratio and improve your score.

In conclusion, as long as you’re sure to pay on time each month, a personal loan should eventually increase your score by a lot more than the initial inquiry caused it to fall. You can also avoid wasting hard inquiries by getting pre-qualified for a loan first. Pre-qualification only uses a harmless soft inquiry. And while it doesn’t guarantee approval, it will let you know if your odds are good.