This site has provided a fair amount of criticism and disdain for Native American lenders over the years. And why not? Most tribal lenders are extraordinarily expensive, provide small dollar loans that almost certainly will not fix (or even remotely help) their customer's unfortunate financial circumstances. Another complaint is that these lenders are often opaque, trying to cloud how much money the loan will actually cost. Instead they offer the customer the "easy" way of simply rolling the loan over, so that "oh, good news, you only have to pay $90 this week instead of $390" and of course the $90 payout is going to draw in many customers who are already on the skids. This way the loans just continue on indefinitely.
Now let's look at one of the newer tribal lenders to arrive on the scene, which is Little Lake Lending. While this company is still very expensive for even a $400 loan, I will mention two positive outcomes from this new tribal lender:
1) The company provides installment loans instead of payday loans. That's a good thing because the payday loan option, while nominally for a shorter time frame (normally less than 14 days) tends to roll on indefinitely for many customers. If you can rollover the loan an unlimited number of times then the lender has the ability to just keep making money off the original loan (most likely for $500 or less) forever. Little Lake Lending sets up your loan as an installment loan, which most likely will have 12 repayment dates preset when the loan is created. This gives you time to repay the loan and it is not an open-ended mess like the payday loan. One small thing I didn't care for was the verbiage used at the Little Lake Lending site.
On their FAQ page they use the verbiage of "How do I qualify for a short-term loan at Little Lake Lending?" - notice they refer to it as a short-term loan, which almost sounds like a bank loan product. Remember unsecured lending at banks? We're quite far from those days. See the verbiage here: https://littlelakelending.com/faq
But once you get to the Little Lake Lending page that shows the rates the verbiage changes to "Cost of Your Short-Term Installment Loan" -- notice they slipped in the word installment. Which in the end is fine, it's one word different from page to page. It would just be nice if they were consistent in their product message. An installment loan is much different than a short-term (allusion to unsecured) loan.
2) The other great thing about Little Lake Lending is their upfront, no holds honesty. If you want to see their honesty go to the rates page here: https://littlelakelending.com/rates
It is a rare thing for a tribal lender to just come out and show you their rates, the calendar of repayments and tell you the dollar amount that you have to repay, including a breakout of the principal amount that is to be repaid and the total amount of interest that you will be repaying. But all of that is included and published on their website, on this rates page.
Let me say that this is an incredibly rare thing. Mobiloans has always been very upfront and detailed the structure of how much would be owed over time versus how much you borrowed from your credit line. That is the only other Native American lender that I can think of that is as open as Little Lake Lending.
Now have said that, this loan will still be very expensive. Let's have a look at the rates page on their site. If you scroll to the bottom, just below the last repayment week (Payment 12) you see the Total amount. On a $400 loan you will have repaid a total of $1,529 which arithmetic tells us you have will have repaid $1,129 in interest dollars. Very expensive.
This loan is still superior to the army of payday lenders that are out there. The loan is structured. It is a finite vehicle with 12 weeks. Also, don't forget that the borrower has the option of repaying the loan early and therefore not pay nearly as much in interest. For example, let's say you are coming up to payment number 3 and soon the scheduled amount of money will get drawn (electronically) from your bank account. But instead you contact Little Lake and tell them you are ready to repay the full amount of the principal owed plus the interest for this 3rd repayment. They will edit the electronic payment due from your bank, and pull those additional funds from the account. You are now done with the loan, it's repaid completely.
Installment loans give more time and latitude on how you can manage the loan. Payday loans are just always in your face, always pushing for the next full repayment. I like the installment loan product better. Little Lake Lending is not what I would consider a good lender but they are much better than most other online lenders out there.
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