Although I am aware of the fact that payday loans do have high interest rates of typically $10 for each $100 that you borrow, for me, payday loans are helpful in times of absolute financial urgency, especially to individuals without an emergency savings fund or a credit card and has bad or no credit history.

To me, as long as you fully pay back your payday loan amount on time, paying $10 interest on every $100 that you borrow from a payday loan provider seems to me, a reasonable rate. For instance, if you obtain a payday loan amount of $200, then paying back $220 is not costly because it helped you in a time that you needed it most.

One example of a financial urgency is your due credit card bill and you don’t have the cash to pay for it. Note that on a $300 amount due on your credit card, you will generally incur late fee charge of $35 thus also making your credit card balance go beyond its limit and you would incur another $50 over-the-limit charge, for a total of $85 in interest.

Now if you acquire an online payday loan of $300 to pay for your credit card due, you would only be paying back $330, saving you $55 had you not paid your credit card bill on time.

For as long as you are certain that you can afford to fully pay your payday loan on time, a payday loan can be a smart move.

I agree! Those “refund anticipation loans” are a total ripoff. But, lower income people consider the $100 or so that they cost, a small price to pay to walk out with their refund that day. They want their money now!

The really sad part is that with a little planning, these people could be living on their refund throughout the year instead of over withholding.

Lots of tax outfits have them, and since they always e-file, the tax refund is funded within a few days at worst. Tax refund loans often have a “processing fee” that amounts to a fairly big percentage of the refund itself, making the interest rate on the loan enormous.

Regarding the photo: I realize that it is hard to deny ourselves of things. However, isn’t that what we have to do if times get hard enough? Are movies “needs?”

Regarding the photo in the article: Maybe they’re smoking because they’re addicted and they save money by renting movies instead of going to the theater. You can’t know from one picture whether this is responsible behavior or not. As much as people talk about the “latte factor” it’s pretty hard to deny yourself everything.