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Tuesday 15 November 2011

Cash Advances

By Landon Griffin


When you need money quickly, your options are going to be limited. There are cash advances though, as well as payday loans which are much the same. What these really are are very short term loans which you can take out quickly, which makes them particularly helpful if you are facing a financial emergency.

How do Cash Advances Work?

The first thing that we are going to go through is the application process in place for cash advances. This will let you know whether you are going to qualify or not and the sorts of questions that you can expect. In terms of the questions, most will be focused on employment details.

Generally speaking if you are going to get a cash advance then you are going to have to pay it back when you are next paid. And you usually have to get a monthly salary in order to qualify. Also of course you are going to have to make enough in a month to be able to cover the loan.

There won't be many more questions apart from that, except for personal details of course. It should only be a short form that you have to fill out. For example, there's going to be no need for you to submit to a credit check, lenders of these loans aren't bothered about that since they are very short term loans. Which is good because it makes the process more speedy.

How to Use a Cash Advance

What kinds of situations are cash advances useful in? There are lots of different situations but they are all going to be emergencies. That simply follows from the way in which loans of this sort work. If it's not an emergency then you'll be able to wait until you are next paid for the money that you need, or else you can just let it slide if it's not important.

When it comes to what is important enough to use a cash advance, that is something which only you can say. The providers of these kinds of loans are not going to enquire what you're going to use the loan for so there are no official limits. It doesn't matter whether you use it to pay a utility bill or go out drinking then, you can use it for anything.

On the whole though, most people would only consider the utility bill to be an emergency. And even then, that's only if it is a final demand. Having said that though, it could be that you consider going out drinking to be an emergency. Maybe it's for someone's birthday for example, or a leaving do. If it's important enough to you then that's all that matters.

How Much Will a Cash Advance Cost?

From the information already provided then you should now have a good idea about how they work and why they are useful. All that is left then is to answer how expensive they are. Lots of people get the wrong idea about that because they think that, with the APR being so high, they must be very expensive. With these being very short term loans though, the APR is misleading.

With a long term loan it's useful to know what the annual percentage rate (APR) is because that is going to let you know how much it is going to cost you each year. Which you can compare with the rest of your yearly spendings. However a cash advance is not supposed to last anywhere near a year so it is not giving you a useful figure.

In reality, most of the time you'll only be paying around 25% in interest, which still might seem like a lot. However you have to take in to account that this is the total amount you have to pay, and with long term loans the total amount is usually a lot more than that.




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