Managing Money
You probably know what your income is (earned income from work, plus tax credits, and benefits, and income from other sources), but do you know how much you spend and what you spend it on? Are you managing to save for your retirement and have you got funds to cover for the occasional emergency?
Do you feel you are managing money well - are you in control of your money or are your controlled by your money?
Gaining Control
Until recently money credit (loans, credit cards, store cards, etc) has been easy to obtain - in fact in the UK the average amount of money owed is in excess of £10,000 (exc. mortgages). At some point this debt has to be repaid and in the meantime interest is being charged on that debt.
If this sounds like you then you need to improve your managing of money - we have some simple suggestions on how to address the problem:
- Set a budget and stick to it - You need to reduce your spending to be less than your income - that way the surplus income can be used to reduce any debt you have, and then start to save money for your future (and for the "rainy days").
- Replace expensive debt with cheaper debt - consider pooling the expensive debt and paying it off with a lower cost debt consolidation loan (this is what our guarantor loans are often used for - and because our lenders don't charge penalties for early repayment you can pay it off as fast as you like to reduce your overall interest costs)
- If your debt is large compared to your monthly income then simply cutting your money spending in the hope of reducing your debt may be too difficult and you will need some specialist debt advice.
- If a cash emergency arises and you don't have any money savings then consider a cash advance (up to £1000) against your next pay check (a payday loan cash advance) - this is likely to be cheaper than going overdrawn or using your credit card.
Responsible lending
Our lenders have a set of general lending criteria that you need to be able to meet before they can consider lending to you. However, because they are responsible lenders they can only lend if they believe you can afford it. For them to assess your particular circumstances please complete the application form.
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