september 5, 2020

Not everyone writes up and adheres to a budget. But even for those who do, the best-laid plans can go awry quite easily. Those are the times when payday loans can be the fix.

Here’s how it typically plays out:

- You set a budget that logically balances income against expenses, perhaps with a little room to spare.

- An emergency event throws your budget off.

- You can’t cover regular expenses, and have to consider penalties and service cut-offs.

- You look for a solution.

- The second and third parts of this process are largely about what happens to you. But what you do in the first and fourth steps are the parts you can control.

Part one, budgeting, is something you do under calm circumstances. You make decisions – how much you can afford for housing, food, cable TV, telephone plans – that are sound and logical. But the fourth part, looking for a solution when cash is low, might be made in more of a panic.

That’s why it makes sense to think through in advance how a payday loan might be your backup, a “plan B” so to speak. It’s possible to get a payday loan in a hurry, because it only takes about 15 minutes to complete an application. Payday loans transacted online are all about speed and convenience (confirmation in one hour, loan deposited into your checking account by the next business morning).

But thinking through what payday loans are, how they work and how you manage the payback are things worth considering in advance. It is an advance against your next paycheck. You are expected to pay it back on that payday, although there are ways to extend the payback of a payday loan into two or more pay periods into the future. You will necessarily need to cut back on expenses in that future pay period, or increase your income.

Most important, you can work out long-term solutions with the time you buy with payday loans.