Cash Advances

Posted by Fred Lima | 1:00 PM | 0 comments »

By Nicolas Bevans


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 Cash Advances Work

What is going to be explained first of all is the application process for cash advances. This can all be done online now, so you're just going to have an online form to fill out. The questions are going to be centred around your employment situation, and the following information will help you to determine whether you'll qualify or not.

When it comes to the employment questions, there are going to be two crucial ones. First of all, when you get paid. If you don't get a monthly salary then you probably won't be able to get a loan. And in terms of how much you make in a month, it is going to have to be enough in order to cover the loan amount plus interest.

You will also have to fill in some personal details of course, but apart from that you shouldn't really have any problems. Something that most lenders ask for but that you don't have to worry in this situation is a credit history. With these being extremely short term loans, that is not deemed to matter. An advantage of which is that these loans can be granted very quickly.

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.

Generally speaking though, paying a utility bill is a much more common use for this sort of loan. When it comes to more frivolous things like going out drinking, most people would simply accept that they don't have the money for that this month. Although something like that can also be an emergency, if for example a friend is leaving and you want to attend their leaving do.

How Expensive is a Cash Advance?

With the information provided already you should know how a cash advance works and also the situations in which it is useful to use them. All that is left to answer then is how much they cost. This tends to get distorted by the APR, which is misleading as these are actually very short term loans in fact.

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.

What you actually have to pay in interest, most of the time, is going to be somewhere around 25%. Of course that is more than most APRs, but you have to consider that this is the total amount of interest that you are going to have to pay on the loan. The total amount you pay on a long term loan would usually be more than what you are charged for this sort of loan.




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