If you find yourself struggling to pay your bills when they come in (and who hasn’t at one time or another!), then you might find this approach useful:

After only 2 or 3 pay packets you’ll find there’ll be enough in there to cover bills as they come in, and you’ll start to feel like your in control of your money again.*The reason for dividing by a lesser number than you actually get paid is to help allow for unexpected bills that tend to arise from time to time.

If you are one of many of us that have several credit cards and all of them are starting to hit their limit, it may be worth looking at moving some or preferably all of them to a new card.

Most banks and financial institutions offer special interest-free or reduced interest periods from 3 months to 12 months on new cards. Usually these rates are only available on transferred balances, not on purchases which is just fine. Now assuming that the new card’s regular interest rate is less than you are paying now, you’ll be much better off to move the balances over.

This is usually much easier than applying for a consolidation loan as banks generally will issue a credit card more easily than issue a personal loan. Given that for the reduced interest period you repayments will also be significantly reduced, you have an opportunity to pay down more of the outstanding amount during this period than you otherwise would.

Once your interest rate has returned to normal, there is actually nothing stopping you from moving the balance again to a different card, also offering a cheaper rate! Theoretically you could go 2 or 3 years with paying no, or less than 3% interest – which could save you hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

If anyone has actually done this more than once, please post your comments.

Whilst payday loans may seem attractive due to their ‘instant’ nature, the interest and fees which often rise above 100% of the actual loan amount mean you’ll be taking two steps backwards. When your pay day does roll around, you now be short around double what you took the loan out for meaning that for this week or month, things may even tighter for you.

There are however alternatives that are really worth looking at, especially if you have considered or used these types of loans in the past.

Having to applying for a payday or paycheck loan should be your very resort. If you only need a small amount and can easily live without the repayment amount from your next pay then it may get you out of a sticky situation. It may even simply buy more time with the landlord for instance until you can apply for a personal loan – just remember that relying on this type of loan is likely to get you deeper into debt, and must be treated with extreme care.