It is everyone’s worst nightmare: paying your bills and realizing that you are going to be coming up short on cash to make every payment this month. It is an extremely terrifying feeling, not knowing what will happen to your credit score, if you could be evicted, or have collection agencies banging at your door. However, there are options if you find yourself in this situation, so don’t panic just yet.
Credit Cards
The first thing you want to look at is to see if you can pay some of your bills using a credit card. This could help you get by for a little bit until your cash flow catches up with your outflows. If you charge an item on a credit card, you won’t get your bill for several weeks, and then you usually have a 30 day grace period to pay the statement before interest even accrues. That essentially gives you up to 60 days from the day you actually charged an item to pay it off, without even paying interest. Even if you can’t pay the balance in full, the interest may be less than what you would pay going elsewhere.
Borrow from Friends or Family
The next step may be to look and see if you could borrow money from family or friends. This is always awkward to do, but if you are short on cash, it could be your only option. Be very clear that this is a loan you will pay back, and give them finite timelines on when you plan to do so. And finally, make sure that you make good on your promise to pay them back or else it could really change the family/friend dynamic.
Payday Loans
Finally, if you are just going to be short on cash until your next payday, you may consider getting a payday loan. The interest rates on these loans are very high, but if you pay it back on time, you won’t be hurting too much. There are services like www.paydayloan.org.uk that make the process easy and understandable, and will help you navigate the process so that you don’t get yourself in trouble.
