Category Archives: Home Mortgage
Personal Loans Your Personal Finance Manager
Life is full of uncertainties. You never know what lurks in the next corner you take. And, therefore, we need to equip ourselves better with things that prove to be quite useful. Money is one such requirement and the solution to most of our problems. But it is not possible for us to carry ready cash and put it forth in a snap of fingers.
This is where personal loans come handy. Studies show that people in the UK prefer to take personal loans for every big or small requirement. People here apply for loans for various purposes, whether it is for emergency situations of grave importance like medical requirements, unemployment loans, or it is for something like home improvement or cosmetic surgery.
Personal loans are of two kinds: Secured and Unsecured. Secured loans, as is suggested in the name, require some sort of security from the borrower. Usually, lenders in the UK accept property such as land or house as security. This security is collateral against which the lender would lend the money. And it is this security which provides the lender a sense of security, an assurance that the borrower would pay back the loaned amount, else the collateral would be seized by the lender.
In case of unsecured loans, there is no requirement of any security as such. The lender does provide the money to the borrowers based on his financial history and his past dealings. However, the rate of interest is higher, and the terms and conditions more rigid in case of unsecured personal loans in comparison to secured loans. This difference arises due to the absence of security, which leads to lack of sense of assurance for the lender.
When you apply for personal loans, you can go for either secured loans or unsecured loans; however, you have to make sure that for secured loans, you need to have a property whose equity is worth the amount you wish to borrow. And in case of unsecured loans, you have to meet the requirements set by your lender.
Payday Loans At War?
If you were perhaps of a more cynical nature, and were looking for an ideal target market for your payday loans business, how would this scenario sound to you?
How about people working in a business where the paychecks are absolutely guaranteed to come in on time each and every month, no matter what?
A business with a large, relatively immobile workforce, who tend to stay in one place for predetermined periods of time, and who will, moreover, have plenty of notice that will move, should that happen.
A business whose workforce is overwhelmingly comprised of young, who are perhaps not too worldly wise, and who are used to doing what they are told to do, when they are old to do it.
I guess that, were you that somewhat cynical payday loan company owner, this would sound pretty good to you, right? Perhaps that is why most military bases in the USA are now almost surrounded by payday loan outlets.
At a time when ever increasing military demands are being made of young army and navy personnel by the continuing Iraq conflict, Senior Military Officers are increasingly concerned about the additional stresses on the servicemen and women caused by the prevalence of outstanding payday loans.
Whilst the payday loan companies themselves deny that they specifically target military personnel, it is hard to actually believe that to be the case, simply from looking at the concentration of payday loan outlets near most military bases.
Stories of both Army and Navy officers falling prey to such lenders are fairly easy to come by, and of course, the last thing that such soldiers, sailors and officers need at a time of war are the additional stresses placed on them by increasing debts.
In fact, the problem has now got so bad that many military bases are running training courses in responsible personal financial management, a key module of which is teaching the younger servicemen and women about payday loans.
In particular, these courses are designed to teach the students how it is probably best to avoid payday loans completely if at all possible, or, if not, how to deal with them responsibly.
Of course, this cannot get away from the fact that military personnel are no different to anyone else, and they will have times of cash flow problems, just the same as their none military counterparts.
And this is equally not saying that payday loans are of themselves a bad thing. Anyone who has used such a loan to dig themselves out of a hole will probably have no problems with payday loans, on one proviso. That is, that they paid it back in time!
Unfortunately, whether the payday loans companies concur or not, there does seem reasonable empirical evidence to suggest that perhaps they are unusually willing to extend such loans to military personnel.
Personnel whose very existence depends on them being able to concentrate 100% on the task in hand, who, perhaps morally, should not be placed under any additional external pressures.
The fact is that payday loans for military personnel are big business, and they do serve a real purpose for the beneficiaries of such loans.
However, there can be no denying that military personnel are not like other people who take payday loans, and it is good to see that the powers that be have taken this on board, and are attempting to deal with it through additional training and education.