Prime Rate Credit

Seems like, with the high gas prices and faltering economy, we’re all looking for ways to rake in a little spare change - or a lot of spare change, depending on whether you are one who has also been affected by the massive layoffs that have occurred as of late at many major companies. Unfortunately, some are having to part with their precious belongings to make ends meet until the rough times are over.

Pawn shops are gaining in popularity as more people need fast cash for necessities like food, utility bill payments and gas money. We’re seeing more pawn shop business growth in the last several years as the economy is crunching budgets with high inflation coupled with the increase in job losses.

The way pawn shops work is that you bring in some of your possessions and it will be given to the pawnbroker as collateral so they can give you a loan. Next, the pawnbroker will loan you money based on the value of your collateral.

Once you have repayed the loan with any interest that has accrued, the pawnbroker gives your collateral back. In the situation where you do not repay the loan as agreed, the pawnbroker will keep the possession you brought in as collateral.

The pawnbroker is the person who loans money on the basis of pledged goods. The pawn shop is the place of business for the pawnbroker. A pawn transaction is redeemable within 180 days unless it is renewed and the end result is the power of sale of collateral if the loan is defaulted.

The interest rate is, as an example cited in N. Carolina, a maximum of 2% per month. Annually, that is about the same as rates charged for credit cards. There are other fees to watch out for such as handling, storage or insurance fees.

At the end of the 6 month period, you either have to pick up your collateral or initiate a new loan on your possession. If you do not do this, the collateral then belongs to the pawn shop and they can sell it.

Even with the economic crunch, remember if you are using a pawn shop to gain quick loans, don’t bring in family heirlooms of great sentimental value. In the event that you can’t make the loan payments, your precious heirloom may be gone forever. Keep your collateral to impersonal items you could live without such as high tech electronic devices.

Other options for economic crunches are listing items on ebay or Craig’s list for sale to gain possible quick cash. Garage sales don’t compare as favorably as the resale value on your possessions are often as low as 10 cents on the dollar.

Many people, amidst what a lot of financial gurus are calling the biggest economic slow down in years, are looking for ways to make a quick buck to help pay for bills in the wake of tightening credit.

Times are quite different than they were even five years ago, when credit was relatively easy to come by when times got tough and people needed the cash to pay bills and to live. Now though, with banks tightening the ropes on lending, and mortgage lenders less likely to lend money based on falling home prices and busted equity, people are having to get second jobs and think of more creative ways to make ends meet.

One quick way to raise money may be to go through old jewelry, collectibles such as toys and nick nacks and other valuables or semi valuables and decide if they are really needed. If they aren’t, and they aren’t of too much sentimental value that they will be sorely missed, sometimes we have to make difficult choices what’s more important. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not all for liquidating your life whenever times get rough, but if it’s just sheer laziness that’s been keeping you from unloading some things you never use, it may be a great way to make a quick buck.

This one may be a long shot, but for some it will work. Try checking out the unclaimed money reports for your state and nationwide records. I have several friends who found unclaimed money in their names from everything from old, unclaimed paychecks, to unclaimed tax return money, insurance policy money and other various, more obscure forms of money that was owed to them, but due to missing connections or some other complication, they didn’t know about it or it never reached their hands.

I’ve known some people who have discovered there were unknown insurance policies that included them as beneficiaries, and albeit it wasn’t usually a windfall, but it was enough that anyone would want to claim it.

Try looking for odd jobs. Someone is always looking for help to clean their house, do yardwork, help them watch their kids and do other various odd jobs around the house or elsewhere. Keep your eyes and ears open for anyone who’s willing to shell out some cash for help! If you can think of any other imaginative ways to raise money when in need, please don’t hesitate to list them here….just nothing illegal please!

I read a story the other day that really touched a nerve with me, because I had lived in constant fear of how I was going to pay my bills month to month, let alone my rent in my small one bedroom apartment my boyfriend affectionately now calls the “cracker box” apartment, for years. I was working on one salary, and a modest one at that.

I was making a car payment, paying electric, heat, insurance, groceries - basically everything, and God forbid something go wrong with my car or anything came along that required hundreds of instant dollars, because I simply didn’t have it. I would have to charge it on a credit card, and that’s how I got myself into trouble with credit cards for a long time.

You see, people don’t realize how important an “emergency fund” is, because they simply don’t have the money leftover at the end of the month to even think about it. I know I felt this way. I thought, jeez, if I can barely make ends meet now, how am I going to worry about setting aside any additional money every month for a fund that I’d probably have to dip into every month anyways, because I’d fall short on the bills and have to use one of my four credit cards which never seemed to get paid down to un-stressful levels.

I’ve said before that one of my friends had a great idea when she started saving almost all of the change she ever got from anything in a jar. At the end of the month, many times she’d have almost fifty to a hundred dollars, and that was a nice little sum to start stashing away for a rainy day, or something worse, like bad health or a defunct car that costs hundreds of dollars to repair.

Look, I know financial times can be really hard sometimes, I’ve been there. But an emergency fund of some sort is almost like insurance for times when we need money the most and feel the most pressure to put things on credit, which can always snowball out of control if we’re not careful.

I just had my first experience with the Coinstar machines, those machines that take all your change and turn it into money so you can spend it, and I am going to be a Coinstar machine regular from now on, believe me. It’s a very cool concept, and I’m jealous of whoever thought of this, because they have to be rolling in the dough from this unique and most likely highly profitable concept by now!

Here’s how it works. Everyone, almost everyone I know at least, takes their change and kind of throws it somewhere. For me, I have a change compartment in my car which I throw all my change from drive thru’s from fast food in every time I get change, or walk into a corner store to buy something. Then, I have my change I keep in my wallet, which I try to use every now and again, but sometimes it just gets too heavy, and I empty it into my third change-keeping place, my pouch underneath my bathroom sink (weird place, I know, but we have limited space now).

So, over about a year and a half, quite a bit of change has accumulated in this pouch. I finally decided yesterday I would take it to one of these Coinstar machines which you see periodically in grocery stores and other locations where they know you’ll most likely spend it. I found one at a local family owned grocery store online, so I went there with my pouch of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.

I dumped a lot of it in a holding area, and periodically, would pull a lever up and put more into the slot when I heard the coin counting slow down a bit. It’s cool, because as it is counting, you see a tally of how much money you are putting in there on a computer screen on the front of the machine. The fee for using this convenient service is 8.9 cents on the dollar, which sure, may be a little bit of money you’re wasting, but in my opinion, since you have to pay for coin rolls anyways, what other way is there to conveniently turn your coins into dollars?

Anyways, you get either a voucher for cash to take to any cashier in the place where the machine resides, or you can choose to make a charitable donation and get a tax deductible receipt for it. I chose this time to take the cash voucher, and I used it toward the groceries I purchased. I had almost fifty dollars in change if you can believe it!

You just never know how much spare change you have lying around, so this is a great service. Heck, you can use it toward that credit card bill you’ve been meaning to pay off if you want!

I read a really intriguing study that was done on human behavior when it comes to money, or more specifically to having and not having money or images of money in their head. A study was undertaken by a woman who noticed that she started to behave differently toward her friends and family on an interpersonal relationship level when she received a significant boost to her salary.

The study involved people being paid a small sum to take a little test, and little did they know that they were either exposed or not exposed to images of money, and this was the primary goal of the research, to see how the people who were exposed to monetary images and the people who were not, behaved differently after their “test”.

The findings undoubtedly point to the fact that money does change the way we view things. For example, we are less likely to ask friends for help to do things that we normally would have before money entered the picture. Also, money tends to make people less charitable in many cases, if you can believe that.

People who come into money or achieve significant increases in salary usually start to think that everyone should “help themselves” and become less helpful to peers. Not so attractive, is it? The important thing is, is to remember that we all are human, and it is always important to help your fellow man or woman, whether it has to do with expendable income or just help with anything.

Wages have reportedly risen sharply in June, which is flagging worries of inflation to financial analysts. The bad news is, that employers still are not hiring at the rate they need to to lower unemployment and get our economy going again.

The limited job growth and opportunities is related to overall rising energy costs, including the cost of gasoline, which has hit many retailers in the pocket book and prevented them from hiring for new jobs since many of them need to pay for gas for shipments and other shipping and freight costs.

Then there are the job cuts by department stores and other big retailers, home builders, and telecommunications companies that cut the hope for new job growth. There are other sectors such as health care though, who have been able to boost their payrolls, which accounts for the sharp increase in wages this month.

In America, we are used to our currency, or our dollar, being one of the most valuable and trusted currencies in the world, having higher valuations than say the Mexican Peso or other foreign currencies of impoverished nations. But is the future of the dollar so bright, or are we in for a “doomsday” as some financial analysts always seem to predict?

The American dollar’s position as the preferred global currency has proven to be a boon for our living standards and our investments, both long and short term.

The dollar however, has seen better days than this current century, with the European currency, the Euro, beating the value of the dollar by almost 30% at times.

American Spending and Saving Habits are a BIG Part of the Problem

It has been said that the people of America, including individuals, and the American government, both locan and national, are not the best savers, and are even worse at spending over what they make.

This is said to contribute to the downfall of the dollar. So, if you want to help, you’d have to modify your spending and increase your saving, think you can do that? Now, if we could all just jump on that bandwagon….

I ran across this cool site called Arm Chair Millionaire, which I thought of course must be filled with “easy get rich quick” schemes, until I started to browse a little further into it, and found that it was actually showing how you can build your own retirement portfolio up so high that you do not have to worry about having enough for retirement, or choosing the wrong stocks and losing money.

I also like the site’s credo from who must be the site’s founder, Rich which goes :
A “Get-Rich-Slowly-But-Surely” Plan

Using Armchair Millionaire’s Five Steps to Financial Freedom, you can build a million dollar portfolio — and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or budget your social life away to do it!

To help you get there, we’ve designed this interactive, fully customized Five Steps tool. Simply enter some information about your savings and income, and we’ll tell you exactly what to do to reach your million dollar goal. Along the way, we’ll explain the sound financial principles that make the Five Steps such a powerful plan.
Let’s get started!

So check it out if you’d like, it looks like it’s got some good, solid investment and money advice. Armchair Millionaire

Most of us would love to pay off all of our outstanding credit - there’s just one little problem - we don’t have enough “disposable income” to actually accomplish that feat. Below I’ve put a link to a really helpful salary calculator that I found. I think it’s a powerful tool to see how much you should be getting paid for your skill set and knowledge, or any degrees you may have, as well as how much your specific geographic area sets these salaries at.

Yahoo Salary Calculator

I’ve been noticing this one commercial playing a lot on my radio on the way in to work, about making a fortune on the internet. They offer a free CD, which I’m sure is only the tip of the iceberg, then you have to pay for the rest of something, which is supposed to make it “easy” for you to make money in the comfort of you own home, on the internet.