Emergency Cash Loans, as the name suggests, are for when disaster has struck. There’s no sickening feeling quite like it; the wolves are at the door and the cupboard is empty.
What will you do? Hide behind the settee with your fingers in your ears and eyes closed while shouting ‘La!La!La! hoping it all goes away? Don’t, it’s not going anywhere until you’ve dealt with it. As many people have discovered over the course of many, many years – you can run and run but you really can’t hide. These days, it’s even easier to find you if you have friends and a mobile phone. Who doesn’t have at least one of those?
Real Emergency Loans
So how quick can you get a loan in a bona fide emergency? Can you really get a loan in 1 hour as is claimed on some sites (including ours)? It’s certainly possible but unlikely in day to day reality. So many things would have to be right that there’s almost no chance at our end of the market that enough of those things will be.
However, it is more than possible to get a loan in under a day and people are getting them all the time, every day of the week, in less than 24 hours. As the credit checking and scoring are done in a matter of seconds it only leaves checking income and a few other miscellaneous details to be able to release the money. That means that if everything’s correctly filled out and your details check out there’s no reason you won’t get your emergency cash loan in under a day and compared to how things were just a couple of years ago that’s a real change for the better.
What is a Financial Emergency?
What constitutes an emergency in our days of hyperbolic media frenzy when every little problem is turned into a full blown crisis (epidemic). It’s the essentials of life that make an emergency. If your car has broken down and you need it for work or to get the kids to school, that’s an emergency.
If you can’t pay your rent for whatever reason, except if you blew it in the pub, that’s an emergency. It’s still an emergency if you blew it in the pub but no lender will look at you or take you seriously if you put that on a form. You’re away on holiday and your cards and money have been stolen or you’re stranded in some way – emergency. It’s the middle of winter, even the brass monkeys are freezing and your boiler just gave up – that’s a definite emergency!
What Isn’t An Emergency?
Your credit card bill is not an emergency although you may beg to differ, nor is an upcoming loan payment you can’t afford to pay. Both of those are better dealt with by speaking direct to your lender, explaining the situation honestly and coming to some kind of arrangement. They’d always much rather get something than nothing. Plus, most Payday Loans/short term loans come with yearly interest rates in excess of 50% thereby making them more expensive than your average credit card rate between 15-30%.
Christmas/ religious holidays/ festivities etc. do not count as an emergency. Far better telling the relatives things are tight this year than getting yourself into a mountain of unpayable debt for gifts nobody will remember an hour after they’ve opened them. Yes, it may feel like an emergency but it doesn’t require a high cost loan to help with your Christmas shop.
What Are Your Options?
When it comes to laying your hands on some emergency cash, you have several options available with no prizes on offer for guessing you’ll have heard of most of them before. That doesn’t mean they’re not worth repeating though.
Option 1. The Bank of Mum, Dad, Brother or Sister (and all the rest) would be our first port of call. They may kick up a little but no one lends like your family. Typically interest free, with very flexible repayments and usually no need for a credit check or proof of income. Always, always, always go here first.
Option 2. Badger Loans – well, we would say that wouldn’t we?
Option 3. Go upstairs into your attic (or equivalent for flat dwellers), have a good rummage and see what you can find. You never know what you might have up there you could sell on a wide variety of platforms from car boots to Ebay.
Option 4. Contact your lender, car mechanic, British Gas or whoever the problem is with and negotiate. Your mechanic might fix your car on monthly terms and a boiler manufacturer will probably also let you have a boiler on a month by month basis.
Option 5. The government. Yes, believe it or not our government also has some funding ideas in place. If you’re stuck overseas try this, it’s an Emergency Repatriation Loan. If you’ve been on certain benefits for a defined time you could get a Budgeting Loan when they start them back up.
Last but by no means least the debt charity Stepchange has some great ideas and information.
Good luck, we hope you don’t need it but if you do, choose wisely, take as much time over your decision as possible and remember everything passes in time. If you feel you need more information about what is a financial emergency and what isn’t, feel free to get in contact with us. If you are facing any financial stress, you can also get in touch with us.
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