welcome back to success with Steven my name is Steven Smith on this channel we talk about uh business strategies financial literacy um and all things when it comes to personal finance and today we're going to be talking about something that I've actually wanted to address a majority of the time um that I've had this channel but I'm just getting around to it now it's the pledge loan with Navy Federal now most of you know this by the Navy Federal pledge loan hack um you know a lot of people talked about it it's not really a hack per se it's just a strategy that you can use to get an installment loan and then when you basically pay off a majority of the loan and it reflects on your credit report it increases your credit score because it looks like you had a loan and you paid a majority of it off very quickly and that's really it um but I do want to go into more of a stepbystep guide when it comes to uh this particular type of loan I just want to explain what this loan is and then I want to explain a little bit more about this uh this strategy and how this strategy actually does work to increase your credit score and how you can utilize it if you are a member with Navy Federal and how it personally did help me um I got my pledge loan and my Navy Federal secured card at the same time between both of those they really did help increase my credit score by using them responsibly and of course paying them on time keep keeping my utilization low um and yeah it also will help with your um internal score so without further Ado uh let's get into the video again the three things that we're going to talk about what is a pledge loan exactly what are the benefits and this credit hack again it's not really a hack it's more of just a strategy but that's what people know it as um so we're going to you know get into the details of that a little bit more and why it helps you in the first place now a pledge loan it's just a a a safe Smart Way to borrow money now technically you're not borrowing money it's just like when you have a secure credit card you're using your own money as collateral so it really is no risk to the bank or financial institution to offer this and may Federal is just one of the uh places that offer a pledge loan there are other places that offer them it just may be it's I think it's called a secured savings loan but a Navy Federal pledge loan is a secured installment loan and essentially you're borrowing money against your own money and as you pay the loan back the money is given back to you so it's a really simple easy process and I think that the reason why people like it is it really essentially is just you moving money around you're you're moving it from one place to the other and then you're getting it right back at the same time you're able to build your credit and then I'll go into a little bit more detail about uh exactly what I mean by just moving your money around so how the pledge loan works and I want to make it as simple as possible you're going to call Navy Federal the only way for you to get this loan is one you have to be a member of Navy Federal two you have to call them and then you're going to specify the amount that you would like to use depending on the amount that you get will determine how long the term is of your pledge loan and then you're going to be asked to add the money into your Navy Federal savings account so you're going to move the money into your Navy Federal savings account the loan is created in a few days and it'll appear in your Navy Federal online account they'll ask you to you know also sign and approve it they'll send you some documentation you normally get it in 24 to 48 hours and then once that happens you'll see the pledge loan on your on your online account you'll also see that the funds have then been moved back into your checking account so you move the funds into the savings a pledge loan is created the money gets put back into your checking account and then you also see the pledge loan so once that happens you will now have a loan that reports to the credit Bure as a new installment loan all right and this is good for a few different reasons and that'll bring us into the next part of our video which is going to be um the things that you should know so you're only allowed to have four pledge loans per savings account with Navy Federal once you finish paying off the pledge loan you will lose the benefits of the Pledge loans so keep in mind that longer loans are better and what I mean by that is I I have another video where I talk about how to get um an 850 credit score a perfect credit score how credit scores break down the only way to have good credit is for you to be actively paying on debt I know for people they think oh if I pay something off then my credit score is going to increase no if you pay something completely off your credit score actually goes down a credit report is like a report card of how well you pay things on time I don't know how well you pay stuff on time once something is paid off so you lose the benefit that's why with the pledge loan a lot of times it's it it gives people a temporary boost to help them get lower interest rates on auto loans to you know to to give them a nice little increase in their score for different things that they want to do but the best benefits you will get from a pledge loan is making it longer I believe you can go um 180 months uh with this loan so that's about what 15 years and here are the different amounts if you do a pledge loan between the amounts of $250 to $500 you can only do 6 months and the APR is 2% if you do $51 to $1,000 for uh then you can get a length of 12 months with 2% APR there is interest on this loan but you know two % is really nothing uh $1,001 to ,500 then you could do it for 18 months with 2% APR $1,551 to $2,000 is for 24 months 2% APR $21 to $3,000 is for 36 months 2% APR uh once you get to uh 3,000 plus $3,001 plus or more you have the option of doing 60 months and um that's you know that's a good one I think that's a good place to actually if you can actually afford to to do it that's a good one uh that's going to be for 5 years and then you get uh you know 2% APR if you want to do it for 61 months to 180 months then it's 3% um but I think that's the best one reason being and I'm going to get to this a little bit later about the breakdown of your credit score um a big part of your credit score is ontime payments and a big part of um your credit score is account length so you got to think if you get a $3,011 um pledge loan and you have it for 180 months 15 years and you pay a a big portion of that loan off that basically guarantees 15 years of ontime payments that's going to be a 15-year account as time ages that is going to help your credit score overall the longer that that loan is the better it's going to to actually be um so you you really want to focus on getting it for the longest amount of time to get the maximum benefit from it I don't think you need to have multiple pledge loans I think having one lengthy pledge loan would be the best option for you now you can only apply for this loan in a branch or over the phone so keep that in mind there's no way to apply for it online you won't see that as an option so these are just a few things that you should know and you should keep in mind uh let's get to the actual benefits of this pledge loan all right so here is the advantage number one when you apply for more loans you're likely to get higher approvals now what do I mean by that when you apply for let's say um a credit card if you look up the CEO of FICO he actually says that a lot of the limits that you get approved for they're they're based off of what they can see on your credit report so let's say you have a pledge loan for $10,000 it is more likely that if you have a balance that high that they'll approve you for a credit card with a higher limit so you may go for a credit card and only have a $3,000 pledge loan and you may notice oh every car that I apply for I'm only getting approved for a $2,000 limit $2,500 limit if you were to have a $10,000 pledge loan there's a greater chance that you may get a credit card with a $10,000 limit $88,000 limit which then will let other Banks know or people that are lending you money that you can handle these high amounts it just increases the likelihood that you're going to be able to get higher limit approvals for other products when other Banks and lenders are looking at your credit profile Advantage number two it builds your internal score with Navy Federal so with Navy Federal um I think if you want to if you want personal credit cards and you want to get high limits by and you don't want to you know apply for too many because it'll reduce the age of your history the more um accounts that you apply for unless you're looking for a particular cash back or benefit I Think Credit Unions like maybe federal they're a good place to get one credit card and stick with it if you were to get something like a cash rewards card I believe the maximum limit you can get on that is 50,000 you can also get um another 30,000 on another card between all of your cards you can have a maximum of 880,000 and if you were to get a business credit card with Navy Federal then you can get 25,000 Max on the business side without documentation so in in overall you can get $15,000 maximum from just Navy Federal that's one institution so one way that you can get these higher limits is to build your internal score with Navy Federal you can build your internal score by getting more products and services like the pledge loan that's definitely one that they're going to look at and it will look good uh Advantage number three uh this will boost your um this will boost your credit cards significantly and um that's just another thing when it comes to it was kind of like the first thing you're going to definitely get higher credit card limit approvals but it'll also increase all limit approvals I kind of Switched Advantage One and Advantage three like for example auto loans everything like that this will just overall increase everything that you're going to get when they see that you have higher higher balances that are paid EX for example if you were to do a $15,000 $30,000 pledge loan like let's just say you have $30,000 in your savings you could technically do a $30,000 pledge loan pay 95% of the loan off you get the money right back but now everyone can see that you have $35,000 where you've paid 95% of that loan and you probably want to stick between 80 and 90% but if you want your money back you want your money back I would say either way that's still pretty good now if you were to let's say go and apply for like a car loan I think that you're more likely to get a better interest rate and higher approvals because they see you can handle that $35,000 that $30,000 that you that that you had it just looks good so uh there's a lot of advantages to to actually getting this um getting this loan and overall I think it's a great strategy depending on where you are now um I've seen some people say that this is a you know it's not good to have secured loans installment loans here's the thing these are all just strategies and tools there is no one can say without a doubt that this is good or it's bad right I wouldn't use a hammer to tighten a bolt I would you know I would use a wrench you use different tools for different things if you have an 800 credit score this maybe it won't benefit you much um you know it depending on where you are maybe it won't benefit you for someone who's new to credit this is going to help this will help um especially if you get most of your if you're like Bank loyal and you want to get all your products from one place put all your money into Navy Federal get the pledge loan you want to get your auto loan your mortgage and you you know you build that relationship then absolutely this is this is a great thing then in that case so um just don't let things like that deter you just know that everything is a strategy for a different level and as you start to level up certain strategies won't be necessary for you certain strategies will still be necessary um so you can pick and choose how you want to do this again this is just a tool that's all it is it's it's a tool that you can utilize strategically to help build your credit get higher limit approvals and to just help you overall with boosting your credit score all right now let's talk about this credit hack again it's not really a hack but I know that that's what people know it as and we use hack cuz hack is like a buzz word you know it it it makes you want to click on the the like video when people say hack cuz it feel like it's like a secret not really a secret it's just I mean you you could do this with you can do this with so many different things you don't have to necessarily just do this with just the pledge loan there's so many different strategies that that you can use so here here's the the strategy with the pledge loan or hack when you receive your pledge loan you pay back 80 to 90% of the loan this will result in a credit score increase and you get the money back into your savings account this is simple straight to the point this is just how it works um you only have to pay the APR amount which for example uh let's do some math really really quick if I had $30,000 as a pledge loan and I did 3% APR for $330,000 the 3% would be $900 while that sounds like a lot in comparison to how much you are actually the benefits you're getting from it I think that it's worth it and that would be a pledge loan spread over what 15 years 180 months so you also have to um you also have to consider consider that as well uh let's go on the low end if you had a pledge loan for $11,000 and it was only 2% APR that's $20 so so you know it I think that it's relative to how much you're putting in but of course then it's also spread over a longer period of time the more money that you use overall I'd spend $900 on $30,000 for 15 years of ontime payment history that is a steal you know to to to me um now here is a credit breakdown the reason why this hack or strategy works really well and people recommend it is because of the breakdown of your credit score 35% of your credit score is ontime payment if you pay this loan off and you do 90% again imagine the 180 month one you've already locked in almost you know that's like 14 years right there of on Time payments it's locked in you already did it that's amazing um utilization only for credit cards this will also help with your credit history the longer that you have it and it's going to help with your credit mix your credit mix is 10% of your credit score so already between ontime payments between credit history and between what credit mix that is 35 45 55% of your credit score is being hit and new credit if you count that that's 65% of your credit score so I mean I don't really think that it's really going to get like that much better than that it it's it's not going to get that much better actually I'm sorry that's 70 % of your credit score you can hit 70% of your credit score with this one loan if it's utilized properly so I I think that it's one of the the best strategies that you can use to help you um grow your credit and if you understand the breakdown of how your credit score works then it's almost a no-brainer to have this with Navy Federal now if you are watching this video and you're thinking I'm not a member of Navy Federal there's plenty of videos on that about how to become a member um for example if you are a roommate of someone who is in the military or is a member of Navy Federal they may not be in the military them themselves but if they're a member and you contribute at least 50% to the household like if you're paying half the rent you can become a member of Navy Federal uh if you know someone who's a member they can provide you with an access code um if you have a family member who is in the military then you can become a member and then people have another one called a a hack it's not a hack it's not a backdoor method if you've had a family member who was in the military like for example I've had uh two grandfathers both of them have passed they were both in the military you know I can grab all of my grandfather's all of his credentials I can show them that I had a grandparent who's in the who was in the military who's no longer alive today and I can still become a member of Navy Federal it's it's not like a secret it's not a hack it's not a back door you can do that just by like it's like lineage like if they were there and you can show them then you're good and that's really it so honestly I mean if as long as you have someone who's been affiliated with the military in some way form or fashion there's a way for you to become a member of Navy Federal it's again it's it's not it's not that difficult um and I think that if you are looking for a credit Union to actually utilize in order to help grow uh to grow your uh credit especially if you're brand new to credit I believe that this is a good one and even if you're not brand new um I think that you know for Navy Federal and credit unions in general because credit unions are not traditional Banks they're not a they're not looking for profit they use the money for their members in order for them to give you good interest rates on loans and other products so in actuality people need to have more members of Navy Federal in order for them to grow the more people that have Navy Federal they deposit money into their account they leave money in their account they pay back these products and services on time the more money and better interest rates they can offer you as a union again the union is run by the members it's not a Traditional Bank where they're interested in making a profit based off of interest rates and Bank fees so the members the more members that there are that use the accounts responsibly the more they can offer other members so um that's pretty much all I have for this video for today if you have any questions or concerns uh please leave them in the comments I'll get to them as soon as I can if this is something that you're currently using I would love for you to drop in the comments you know what the pledge loan did for you how much did it increase your credit score are you looking to possibly do this um right now um are you a member of Navy Federal are you know are are you not you know the different ways that you've joined if you became a member it's just good to share all this information because the more information that we share the more people that we can help um and then you know in turn we can all become a resource for each other uh when we need to get these types of products and services or things change new information comes to light we all want to be a resource hub for each other you know so use your peers to also learn a lot of the things that are going on with these products and services so thank you guys so much um and you have a wonderful day