Don’t lose sight of your financial alternatives

It’s all too easy to develop tunnel vision when a financial crisis rears its ugly head, but financial experts say that you need to keep your alternatives in mind before going down the payday loan path of least resistance in order to avoid even more long-term financial woes.

With the Consumer Credit Counselling Service reporting that around 1.2 million people in the UK took out short term loans from payday lenders last year alone, many have turned to payday advance lenders to help get themselves out of hot water. Unfortunately it’s quite often an instance of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire,’ as payday lending is unsustainable when it comes to long-term financial problems, and can often make bad situations quite worse due to exorbitant late fees and interest rates.

Industry experts say that you can take steps to avoid having to rely upon payday lending, and it’s never too late to begin doing things like cutting your spending and budgeting your outgoings much more closely in order to avoid stretching your finances. This doesn’t mean you’ll have to give up every trip to the cinema for the indefinite future, but it will mean you may need to scale back your entertainment budget a bit until your finances recover sufficiently.

If you’re dead set against giving up any of your current leisure activities, you’d better find a way to bring some extra cash in that won’t see you over a barrel with a payday lender. If you’re like many Brits, you’re likely to have some old bits and pieces lying about that you don’t need any more, so you can consider selling them on eBay or another similar website.

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