OneMain personal loan 2025 review for people with Non-Prime Credit: $1,500 to $20,000

OneMain Financial offers loans from $1,500 to $20,000 to people with non-prime credit. That means they primarily serve people who have credit scores below 670. If you have a non-prime credit score and are looking for a loan, should you consider OneMain Financial? In this video, we're going to give you the latest information about the company, their policies, and what you should consider before you sign on the bottom line. And we know something about personal loans. We've worked in the lending industry for years, so we understand what's going on behind the scenes. We also track over 100 credit providers, so we can tell you how they compare. We've chaptered this video, so if you have a specific question, jump to the relevant section. The first question many people ask is whether OneMain Financial is a legit company. OneMain Financial is a publicly traded company that has a long history. It was founded in 1912 in Maryland as the Commercial Credit Company. As you can imagine, it has undergone a lot of change since then. It was bought by Citigroup and then sold, and ultimately it was bought by Springleaf Financial, but they kept the OneMain Financial name for the entire entity. OneMain Financial provides personal loans to people who have credit scores that are below prime. That generally means that their credit scores must be below 670. In some cases, OneMain will provide loans to people with credit scores as low as 600, but they won't just look at credit score to determine whether to lend you money. They will look at your overall credit history, which would include your payment history, and whether you filed for bankruptcy in the past. They will also look at your income and expenses to see if you have the capacity to afford the monthly payment. They'll look at application data, alternative data sources like secondary credit bureaus, and the purpose of your loan, as well as the state in which you live. Finally, they will also weigh all of that against their recent company performance so they can hit certain profitability measures. It is not uncommon for OneMain to encourage you to secure your application with the title of your motor vehicle. The presence of collateral on your application can help you get approved or to be approved for more money. OneMain likes it when you secure the loan. The presence of collateral lowers the risk of losing money on the loan. They can repossess your car to compensate for lost principal if you have difficulty repaying the loan. Securing the loan with your car title can also give them additional leverage. Since they will legally hold the title to your car, you won't be able to sell the car without first repaying the loan and getting the title back. Half of OneMain's personal loans are secured with a motor vehicle. What APR can you expect from a OneMain financial personal loan? Their APRs range from 18% to 35.99%. As you are going through your application process, OneMain might give you an idea of what they think you will qualify for, but that initial quote is actually meaningless. All that matters is what the loan agreement says, so you won't know what to expect until they present you with the official offer. Is that interest rate high? The answer to that is yes and maybe. For a short-term loan, less than 24 months, or a small loan amount, say less than $3,000, that rate would be manageable. On the other hand, if you are taking a substantial loan over the course of five years, that interest rate could be difficult to manage. Think of it this way. A $10,000 loan at a 25% APR will mean that your monthly interest expense will exceed your monthly principal payment for well over two years. It will feel like you are mainly paying interest for a long time. If you do take a loan that is over $10,000 with an APR over 25%, you need to be aggressive about making extra principal payments in the first six months of the loan. The temptation after taking a loan is to give yourself a bit of a break from dealing with your finances, but that breather will cost you thousands of dollars in interest expense. Make extra payments as aggressively as you can, and you will need to call in order to make the extra principal payments. When you do call, you need to be very clear that you want the extra payment to go towards principal and not prepay your next payment. Prepaying your next payment will not do anything to help you save on interest. In addition to the interest rate, one main financial will charge you an origination fee. An origination fee is a fee that comes out of the proceeds of the loan before you receive the money. The size of the origination fee will depend on the state in which you live and will either be a flat fee or a percentage of the loan amount. If it's a flat fee, it will be between $25 and $500. If it's a percentage, it will be between 1% and 10% of the total loan amount. One main will charge other fees as well. Again, the fee will depend on what's permissible in the state in which you live. The late fee will either be a flat fee of $5 to $30 or a percentage of the late amount between 1.5% and 15%. If you don't have enough money when they attempt to take the payment out of your account by ACH, they will charge you an NSF fee of between $10 and $50. $50 is the most I have seen by any company, by a lot actually. When you apply for a one main personal loan, you might also be invited to buy one of their insurance products. Very few lenders sell insurance on their loans. One main is one of them. They offer credit life insurance, credit disability insurance, and credit involuntary unemployment insurance. It's important that you understand that their insurance is optional. They can't make the insurance mandatory for taking the loan. In general, I am skeptical of whether the insurance is worth the money. For a $12,000 loan, if you were to add disability and unemployment insurance, it would add approximately $1,300 to the total cost of the loan. That would be equivalent to adding 3% to your interest rate. Of course, insurance expense will not be accounted for in your APR, so it will be extra. What would a one main financial personal loan be good for? Their APRs are just too high to seriously consider one of their loans for debt or credit card consolidation. You need to get a loan that has an APR that is at least two to three percentage points lower than the interest rate on your current debts for it to be worthwhile. One main might be a good option for covering a monthly shortfall, especially if you know you can repay the loan quickly. As long as the loan is modest, you could also use the loan to pay for car repairs or minor medical expenses. One main expressly forbids the use of their personal loans for higher education tuition, student loans, investing, or small business financing. These loans are probably too expensive to consider using them for really expensive spending, like adopting weddings, funerals, or home renovation projects. You could use them for moving expenses as long as you don't need a lot of money and you know you can repay the loan within a year. You probably also want to avoid using this kind of a loan for discretionary spending, like vacations, and you should probably avoid using them for vehicle purchases. One main financials personal loans are best for short-term borrowing that you know you can pay off relatively quickly. They cater to people who might struggle to get approved by other lenders, so their loans are a little more expensive. Their APRs would make substantial loans expensive over the long period of time, so you will want to be cautious in those circumstances. It is important to understand that every lender has their own algorithm for who to approve, how much to offer, and at what rate. You might be denied by one lender only to receive a great offer from another one. The only way you can be sure you're getting the best deal you can in your situation is to shop around. If you can, get two or three approved offers before you accept a loan. At the UConn project, we tried to make shopping around easy. On our Marketplace page, you can select the purpose of the loan, the amount you need, and your credit score. When you apply to any one of our featured lenders, we will check your rate with up to 40 other lenders behind the scenes. 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 experience with one main financial, leave a comment below and tell us what you liked and what you didn't. We're trying to build a community of people who can share their experiences so we can all be better informed when making financial decisions. So your comments are valuable. If you found this information helpful, please like this video and subscribe to our channel. Your support helps us out, and we really appreciate it. Thanks for watching.