I’m starting to sound like a broken record with my gripes about Halifax, but if they will keep bombarding my household with junk mail, what else can they expect?

This time it’s a personal loan and, apparently, there’s £13,000 “reserved and waiting” me.

Somehow I don’t think they really have put it aside in a pile with my name on it, but I’ll let that pass.

My real complaint is the interest rate: they are trumpeting the fact that it’s “just” 7.9 per cent.

They seem to be implying 7.9 per cent is some kind of bargain. Hardly.

I can go on the internet and get a loan from Moneyback Bank or Barclaycard at 6.3 per cent.

That may not sound like a huge saving, but if you were repaying £13,000 over five years, it would cost almost £600 more with Halifax.

Bizarrely, by going online I can get a rate of 6.9 per cent from Halifax themselves.

To add insult to injury, they want loan customers to take their repayment insurance.

But the leaflet doesn’t mention how much this might cost.

When I phoned the sales line to ask, I was told it was impossible to say as this was worked out individually.

So I went back online and made some calculations based on examples I found on Moneyfacts.co.uk which use Halifax’s own repayment cover rates.

It looks like it could add about £80 a month to that already inflated loan repayment.

No wonder they’re not keen to advertise the cost, as when I checked the price offered by independent provider Paymentcare.co.uk, it was around £10!

So will I be taking Halifax’s loan and repayment cover? Certainly not, and I hope no-one else does either.

A mortgage seeker got in touch the other day to ask if they could add their stamp duty to their loan.

The answer is yes, provided you can persuade your mortgage lender to part with the extra cash for your lawyer to pay this bill.

But you’d be daft to do it.

On a typical £180,000 property, stamp duty is currently £1,800.

Let’s assume you’re borrowing £160,000 on a repayment basis over a traditional 25-year term at an average annual interest rate of 6 per cent.

Adding that £1,800 will cost you an additional £3,477 once you take the interest into account.

And if this increase in your loan takes you over the higher lending threshold, you could end up paying thousands more in penalties.

It would be far cheaper in the long run to borrow this cash using a low-cost personal loan – or even a cheap rate credit card.

Borrowing £1,800 from, say, Northern Rock, which charges 6.5 per cent, over two years would cost a total of just £1,921 – a saving of £1,556.

Better still, why not see if you can borrow interest-free from family or friends?

Nearly two-thirds of us are reluctant borrowers and try to avoid being in debt as much as possible, according Alliance & Leicester.

But what does that say about the other third?

And the news just gets worse.

All too often, when we borrow convenience wins over value for money.

For more than four out of ten, A&L says, that means signing up for potentially uncompetitive forecourt finance when buying a car, simply because it seems like an easy and painless way to pay.

And at the shops, five out of ten will happily use store cards for the same reason.

If fact, forecourt finance (unless it’s the interest-free variety) and store cards are generally anything but painless.

Spend £10,000 on a car using a five-year deal at 15.9 per cent annual interest and you would end up paying £14,558.

Use a store card, with a typical rate of 29.9 per cent, to make the same value of purchases, again paying them off over five years, and it would cost a staggering £19,374.

And with a personal loan at a market-leading rate of 6.1 per cent? The total bill would be just £11,627.

Cost-effective borrowing isn’t rocket science.

Secured loan provider Picture Financial says a quarter of the UK population reckon getting their finances properly organised is more important to their happiness than sex, food, work or the weather.

But they won’t be feeling so happy if they decide to make a Picture loan a part of that process.

Its typical annual interest rate is 8.4 per cent, but borrowers may be asked to pay as much as 10.9 per cent, depending on their credit history - at a time when best-buy unsecured personal loan providers are charging only around 6 per cent.

That may not sound like a huge difference, but with a minimum Picture loan of £10,000 and a minimum repayment term of 10 years, that’s a very expensive commitment.

At a rate of 10.9 per cent, it would cost a total of £16,461.

Borrowing the same amount over just five years at a rate of 6 per cent would cut that to £11,599 - a difference of almost £5,000.

To add insult to financial injury, Picture takes a charge over borrowers- homes, which means it can force a sale if they fall behind with their repayments.

So if you need to borrow to get your finances organised, for goodness sake shop around for a better loan deal than this.