Let us talk about the elephant in the room: you need more money in the short term than you have.  Maybe you have an unexpected auto expense, medical bill, or perhaps one of your pets was injured.  Whatever the case, you don’t have enough money in savings, cannot borrow what you need from friends or family, and have no available credit to work with.  Maybe your cards are maxed out or you cut up your credit cards. The payday loan problem has become a matter of national concern.  These predatory “loan” companies pile on so many fees and such high interest rates that they manage to keep as many as…

Sooner or later most of us will borrow money at some point in our lives. For many people borrowing money will become a lifestyle. And while intuitively that may not seem to make much financial sense the truth is really more complicated than that. Debt, especially consumer debt, is a two-edged sword. Accumulation of debt can fuel huge economic growth but only up to a certain point; and then the addition of even more debt or maybe just the failure to pay down the debt leads to economic downturns, what we call recessions and depressions. Of course, a depression is just a very, very bad, deep recession. 100 years ago…

“Float” is a financial concept that has been used in both personal and business accounting for a long, long time. In simple terms float is the temporary double use of an asset or valuation, including money. The most common example used to explain float involves writing a check. On Friday you write a check for $100 to Sam. The $100 is in your account. On Saturday Sam deposits the check in his account. Even by today’s lightning-swift banking processes, Sam’s bank probably won’t receive the money for the check from your bank until Monday or Tuesday. So from Saturday until whenever your account is debited for $100 that money “exists”…

Like millions of other people I use credit cards from time to time to finance big expenses. But a few years ago I found myself in a real spot and I thought at the time that my credit cards would be a good solution for me. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until too late that banks are not my friend. What happened? I lost my job. Fortunately I had set back a little bit of money and I was able to use that to stay afloat while I looked for new work. But I also had a couple of credit cards with charges on them. I made regular monthly payments on…