Product Review: MoneySearch Loan Search Engine

About the company: "At MoneySearch.com, we are a Loan Search Engine, and we're commited to helping you find a wide assortment of lenders and brokers. Our purpose is simple... to provide you with a simple way to find a local lender and view updated rate comparison surveys from hundreds of lenders and brokers nationwide."

The big pitch: Get quotes from multiple lenders with the lowest rates.

Yet another in a long line of money lending websites that don't actually lend you any money, but rather send your details to companies that might, at least we have to give MoneySearch.com credit for not disguising their true situation like so many others of their ilk do.

MoneySearch says it right up front - they are not a financial lender, they are a Loan Search Engine. And to that end, they do an okay job. If you only want to use their system to ensure a handful of potential lenders contact you with their offers, by all means, go to MoneySearch.com and knock yourself out .

But, and here's the rub... if we just wanted random lenders to call us, we could flip through a phonebook and call them directly, you know?

The best 'loan search engines' will take your information and give you back a stream of data on who has the best rates today, and who specializes in your area/credit situation/type of loan. They take your info and process it, giving you back a list of good stuff that you can then take the to the next level.

"Oh, it says here that Money Lenders Inc can give us a lower rate, with no money down... let's give them a call," - that's helpful. "Oh... they say four lenders will cal us sometime in the next five days..." - that's not so helpful.

At least not to me. What is helpful is the literal overload of lending information that you can find on the MoneySearch.com website. They handle a lot more than home loans - they do home equity loans, debt consolidation loans, auto loans, commercial loans, student financing, insurance, first home buyers, less then perfect credit, prequalified, credit cards, construction loans, FHA, VA, no documentation, credit repair... basically anything you could ever really want in terms of borrowing money from a bank, lender, or other associated usurer.

They have mortgage calculators, info on how to decide whether you should buy or rent, refinancing assessment tools, investment calculators, lease calculators, instant credit reports... Or rather, they don't actually have any of that... but they link to it really well.

So if you're in the early stages of deciding whether or not you're going to be a borrower, perhaps this is a good place to get all the information you'll need. And then, when you've sucked them dry of info, maybe then you can find a website that takes you to the next level, because though MoneySearch is an honest, successful, straight-up, above board company, it just doesn't do as much as, ultimately, we'd hoped it would.

The Product Trends rating: Plenty of information, but that's about all. Three stars.

To try MoneySearch.com for yourself, click the image below:

Product Review: America's Lending Partners

About the company: At America's Lending Partners you submit your home loan request just once. We then match you with up to four of our lending partners who range from national to local lenders. Our lending partners contact you directly so you can compare offers, compare options and decide which loan is best for you.

The big pitch: Complete one form and up to four lenders will contact you with offers. Over $51b in home loans matches since 1999.

Founded by executives of FirstPlus Financial and The Money Store, America's Lending Partners is not an actual lending institution. They are, rather, a website that gathers your information if you're looking for a home loan, refinancing, home improvement funds, second mortgage, home equity loan, or debt consolidation package, and passes it on to a series of other lenders. It's then up to those lenders to actually contact you with an offer, if they deem you worthy.

For the sake of our testing purposes, we put ourselves forth as looking for a new home loan for a condominium in New Jersey, with fair but not great credit, for an amount of $200,000, with no money down. We went through the process, which took all of about 45 seconds, but at the end we received no offers at all, at least not on the thank you screen (they do say that lenders will contact us later, but still)...

All of which is a little annoying. I mean, if you're looking for a good deal, you're likely to be shopping around, and if other websites are giving you approximations of the rate you're likely to get and America's Lending Partners isn't, then chances are a lot of people who might be have otherwise been helped by them, are going elsewhere in the meantime.

In our research, however, is does seem that America's Lending Partners is very helpful in getting zero money down home loans at a reasonable interest rate, as well as finding financing for borrowers who don't have a great credit rating, and who don't want to pay fees to get their loan application looked at. While companies like E-Loan and ING seem to get a great rate for people who have great credit, America's Lending Partners looks to be the one to go to if you're getting the runaround elsewhere.

Expect interest rates around 5.2% per annum (give or take a half a percent), zero fees, and an easy process to start with, and as always, please, please, please look over your loan agreement before taking on any sort of debt whatsoever. Without taking on a 'test mortgage', the only qualities of a lender than we can assess at this site are the opinions of others, what their rates are, and how simple their process is.

America's Lending Partners is often advertised on CNN, Court TV, Fox News, The History Channel, The Weather Channel, MSNBC, ESPN, USA Network, FX, Spike TV, TV Land, Food Network, TNT, HGTV, Lifetime, and in several national glossy magazines such as Food and Wine, Country Home, This Old House, House and Garden, and House Beautiful - but don't take that as a sign of honesty and authority - if they're advertising heavily, the money to do so has to come from somewhere... somewhere like you. Don't be swayed by marketing - the best possible deal for you is just as likely to come from a small company in Dubuque as it is from a huge multinational. Do your research, haggle like crazy, and beware the fine print.

The Product Trends rating: From what we can see, there's definitely a need for America's Lending Partners out there, and they seem to be making waves in the business. We'd like to see a few things improved, but if you need low or no-deposit financing, this should be your first step. Three stars.

To try America's Lending Partners for yourself, click the image below:

Product Review: Cash Advance Network

About the company: Cash Advance Network offers the FASTEST service available to provide the loan you need. Whether you need the money to pay monthly bills, or take care of car repairs, our cash advance service is here to help you with all of your emergency cash needs! [...] Through our instant approval service online, we offer a convenient solution for those who need cash immediately. In just one business day, you will have the money you need to pay your monthly bills on time, pay for unexpected bills, or get your family through any type of emergency situation.

The big pitch: Get up to $1000 deposited into your checking account within 24 hours!

The payday loan business was once called 'usury', and going back to biblical times it was considered the worst kind of sin. Twenty years ago, it was called loan sharking. Today, it's called 'immediate finance', and though nobody breaks legs in the Payday Loan industry anymore, you can certainly fall into traps if you're not paying attention.

That said, there can be no doubt that the reason this sector of the financial industry has grown so quickly is that there's a real demand for fast loans by people who might not have the best credit rating. Think about it - if you have high credit card bills to pay, and the kids are sick, and suddenly the hot water heater blows up in your basement, you can't always 'just put it on Visa', and you don't always have time to get approved for a personal loan.

Sometimes, whether God would have liked you doing so or not, you simply need a payday loan.

But how do you tell the difference between a company out to rip you off and a company simply offering you a little temporary refinancing? Well, in our opinion, you could do a lot worse than a company that doesn't hide the cold, hard truth from customers, and Cash Advance Network is one such company.

Look in their FAQ and they don't hide from you the fact that you'll be paying high interest on your short term loan - expect to pay $30 in interest for every $100 you borrow in payroll advances, and the length of your paycheck loan will be 14 days - after that they'll start applying financing charges to your account. If you're having trouble paying the entire amount back, you can always renew the loan (up to 4 times) against a future paycheck, and in fact they make it easy to do so through the automated web-based system on the Cash Advance Network website.

If you're paid monthly, you can still borrow money from Cash Advance Network, and they'll still permit you to apply for instant cash loans even if you receive social security payments as part of your income.

One big selling point of Cash Advance Network is that they claim the process is 100% faxless - though that's not entirely true. New customers must fax a copy of their most recent paystub or a benefit award letter, and their may be times that you're asked to send in a copy of a bank statement of a voided check, but once your account is set up, you can get cash loans of up to $1000 in just 30 seconds.

As per usual, self-employed individuals won't get any benefit from Cash Advance Network, as the income of such people is too hard to predict, but if you earn a paycheck, need cash in a flash, and don't want to mess around with pawnshops, we advise giving a long hard look at the Cash Advance Network system.

The Product Trends rating: Let's be clear, we at Product Trends are constantly alarmed by the growth of this largely unregulated industry, and the number of people who lose large pieces of their income to ongoing and impossible to pay off loans. That said, just like credit cards, there's a lot of good that can come from them as long as you DON'T GET IN OVER YOUR HEAD. If you genuinely need short term financing, and you're the kind of person who will do the responsible thing and pay back the loan in quick time, then we'd recommend giving Cash Advance Network a look. Three stars.

To try Cash Advance Network for yourself, click the image below:

Product Review: NextStudent College Loans

About the company: The NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine is one of the largest scholarship databases out there today, and it’s packed with over 800,000 scholarships worth over $2.8 billion. It’s updated daily, free of charge, advertisement-free and completely confidential. [...] NextStudent gives you as many funding options as possible, with low-cost federal and private loans such as undergraduate and graduate student loans, parent loans, private (K-12) loans, federal and NextStudent Custom Consolidation Loan programs and college savings plans.

The big pitch: Lower your student loan payments by up to 60% - that is, between $100 to $500 per month.

One of the running jokes with the claim that the United States is the best place to live in the world (other than the lack of health care, the alarmingly high number of people living in poverty, and the limited number of political options) is the extreme cost of higher education in the country. Most people who go through college come out the other end with horrific student loan debts, some of which follow them around for decades, or even their entire lives.

But just as you can refinance home loans to get a better rate, or consolidate personal loans into one easy to manage debt, so too can you rearrange your student loans to make repayments lower, and get a better deal than what you're used to.

NextStudent has a great set-up in which they offer you use of a free scholarship search engine with over 800,000 individual awards that you can apply for, free one-on-one counseling with a personally assigned Education Finance Advisor, a huge array of tips for getting the most out of your student financing, and a staggering line-up of low-cost student loans.

Take it with a grain of salt, but NextStudent advertises themselves as having the "lowest rate possible 100% free Federal Consolidation", and boasts that they can reduce your payments by as much as $500 per month. Maybe they can, maybe that's bluster, but the important thing about the deal is that you can find out online, through their website, if you qualify and how much they WILL save you every month, without comittment.

Student loans, college loan consolidation, funding for graduate students, parents, high school students - NextStudent covers all the bases. They handle Federal Stafford loans, Federal PLUS loans, private loans, FAFSA, custom consolidation loans, and if you're unsure what you need or how to go about getting it, you can just call one of their Education Finance advisors and talk it through with an expert.

In our opinion, NextStudent has everything you need to explore the world of college and high school financing from a position of advantage. If they'll save you money, go with them. If they won't - don't. But either way, they make it easy to find out, and it won't cost you anything to try.

So go take a look.

The Product Trends rating: We give NextStudent a solid 3.5 stars, with potential for more if we hear positive things from those who use the service.

To try NextStudent for yourself, click the image below: