With the price of gas going sky high, and all of the ads that you see on the news about how easy it is to get one of these loans it isn’t any wonder that people can easily get into trouble financially. People get burned out, each parent is working, usually more than forty hours a week, they are taking care of the kids, the pets, often the chores. They see the commercials on televisions about taking a vacation, or paying the bills, or whatever the commercial may be this particular week for the payday loan companies and they look pretty tempting and after all, the bills must get paid.
The loans are simple, proof of employment is a simple paycheck stub, a bank account statement proves that you have a bank and are established that way, you write a post dated check for the amount of the loan and the fee amount and bang! You are finished. Well, you are finished with the loan application part of the procedure any way. For instance, if a person wants to borrow $200, they would write the check for about $240, to include the fee. Actually, it could likely be more than that but for the sake of argument, that is what we will say. Basically, this means, that the person who borrowed the money paid someone $40 to borrow money from them. Because the interest rates are so high on these loans they don’t advertise they just have flat rates for certain amounts.
If the people using these payday loans are not thinking ahead, but instead using them to have a weekend out it puts them in even more trouble. Those doing it for sheer desperation to get from one bill to another or to avoid bad credit, or a bounced check are in bad enough shape but the others are not thinking ahead enough to realize what they are doing to themselves.
If using these loans to attempt to fix a credit history the consumer is being foolish. The best way to fix a credit history is to put a budget in place and to follow it consistently. A budget, when done correctly, will allow for a small emergency savings but not for a payday loan. These are never a good idea and have no place in a budget plan.
When you are attempting to fix a credit history you will be concentrating on not making future mistakes. Leave past mistakes in the past. Trying to fix bad mistakes doesn’t do any good if you are going to go out and make new mistakes. New mistakes would include paying fees and high interest rates of a payday loan. Actually, paying interest on any type of new loan wouldn’t be a good idea at this particular moment in time. The last thing that a person trying to fix a credit history needs is more money to pay back.
In case of a real emergency there must be other options. Other things that a person can do to raise emergency funds would be things such as sell things, take on a part time job temporarily, and there are agencies out there that are willing to offer low-interest loans based on need. There are people out there who will help, a person just has to find them.
You must keep in mind however, if you have gotten a payday loan, you cannot avoid paying them back. You have already signed papers giving them permission to access your checking account and many have policies in place which allow them to dip into the funds that you have available there. This means not only the amount you wrote the check for but any other late fees which have accrued. These late fees are not a small amount either, these accumulate quite rapidly. To think that this could have all been avoided by simply not going to get this type of loan company in the first place.
Payday loans should be avoided when fixing your credit, but in essence they should be avoided in any instance. The best thing to do is to have a certain amount of money saved in case of an emergency.