John Dewey famously said "No man's credit is as good as his money." It seems just the opposite today, when a bank doesn't care about how much money you have in the bank account, they only care about your credit history. If you are going to apply for a personal loan, you have to make sure you have a good credit history.

But once you have that personal loan, you cannot conveniently forget you have it. If you do that, you will end up with nasty phone calls from credit collection agencies and that will not be the worst of it. You will now have a bad debt reported to the credit agencies. Credit bureaus get all of the information, good or bad, about a consumer from every bank, finance company, store merchant and credit card company. Don't think your loan will go under the radar; it won't. Once it has been reported to the credit bureau, it goes in your file, and now, any time you want to apply for a loan or credit line, the financial institution will look at that record to see if you have a good payment history and determine what kind of a credit risk you are.

But, your life is not ruined just because you now have a bad credit rating. There are many examples of people who, through good money management and patience, have repaired bad credit history. But what if, before you have a chance to do this, you need to borrow money for a new car? The banks look at your credit report and the answer is no. That one blemish on your record has ruined your credit score and any chance of getting a bank personal loan.

It will take will take at least SEVEN years to have any bad reports expunged from your credit report. Once you have waited a sufficient length of time and your credit history is now clean, you will have to build up your history for at least a year before you will be able to get that personal loan.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, aren't we? There is another way. Seven years is a really long time to be without a car, and your job and lifestyle may not permit you to be without a job for only a short while. You have to find another way, and there is one. It is called a bad credit personal loan. Some companies will issue you credit even though you have bad credit. As long as you have a decent job, you can get the credit, but you just have to pay a higher interest rate to do so.

The idea behind a bad credit personal loan is that the lending institution is willing to ignore your past history, as long as your present situation is favorable. If you currently have a job, there should be no problem in obtaining a bad credit personal loan.

One of the main advantages of a bad credit personal loan, besides the fact that you can now have that car that you need, is that it will start to build up a good credit history for you, as long as you keep up with the payments on time. If you can build your credit score back up, you can get back to normal and start to get normal loans with normal interest rates. This will happen eventually, as long as you make your payments on time with the bad credit personal loan.

Having a bad credit report does not have to be the end of the world. You would be surprised at how many people have had bad credit reports and overcome them. Instead of getting depressed about it, do something constructive, such as a bad credit personal loan to get yourself back on track.