Contest Entries
I was on my way home from work one day when the car's temperature gauge suddenly shot into the red. Pulled over, popped the hood and steam started billowing out from the radiator. Alas I just bought 20" wheels for the car so I was broke and payday was still half a month away! So here I am in a flashy BMW with 20" wheels... sitting alongside the road crippled heh. Get towed home, price a radiator (about $300) find a payday loan place and get $400 to get a radiator / coolant / hoses. Everything is cool now right? WRONG. I went on the internet and someone who had a similar problem once suggested I just use a chemical treatment, some gunk you pour in that can plug holes. Best part? Only costs $5 for the jar of gunk. So I go buy the gunk, pour it in and voila! No leak. Now rather than do the sensible thing and set the $400 aside to repay the loan I get the windows tinted and buy an iPod. Fast forward five days. On my way to work again and disaster strikes.. temperature back into the red zone. Pull over and find that the radiator neck cracked. Had I replaced the radiator as planned wouldn't have been a problem. So now I can sit in my cool looking tinted BMW on 20s and listen to my iPod while I wait for the tow truck and try to explain to my boss why I'll be late again for the same reason as last week :)
The worst way I ever used a payday loan was to pay interest on another payday loan! Recently, I got behind, and having used payday loans before, I figured they were a quick fix. Unfortunately, I soon realized that they were not! In addition to my payday loan through National, I accepted one from a local vendor, and one from a shady online firm with outrageous interest rates and conditions. Well, I ended up having to continually borrow from one to pay on the other, and it took several months for everything to get paid off. It was scary and stressful knowing that these payments were automatically coming out, and I had to find a way to cover them. I learned that its always best to deal with money problems by cutting back on spending, and budgeting better. I am now working on creating a savings account to better handle future emergencies. I learned that payday loans should be used for short-term fixes, and that I shouldn't extend myself beyond my means. Now I make sure to carefully consider the necessity of the loan before requesting it, and I ALWAYS go with a trusted company like National, so I know what to expect, and can reasonably make all my payments.
To me, the worst way to use a cash advance is to take out a loan and only pay the minimum due each pay period. If you decide to borrow $500 and the minimum payment is $75 per pay period, if you keep letting it roll over for a couple of months, the amount you would end up paying back would be greater than the $500 you initially borrowed. So my advice is to take the cash advance if it is a dire emergency, pay the entire amount on its due date; in that way, you don't have to look forward to your paycheck being shortened paying on one loan for an amount that was most likely spent in one day.
The worst way someone can use a nationalpayday.com loan is for something you can afford or afford to pay back. I have seen co-workers or associates take loans for unessential items, like a name brand purse. After they get the item, they can't afford to pay the money back so they pay the minimum which it takes years for them to pay back. Over those years, it results in them paying double or almost triple the amount that item would cost if they paid for it themselves. People in those situations should seek professional financial guidance to help them learn how to manage their money. Loans should be used for emergencies or essential items.
The worse thing I ever spend my payday money on was I when I had to go to see my neice in the hospital and decided to go to the casino when I needed the money to pay my taxes and a few bills that I ended up being a little late on. Then before I left my sister's house my neice had turned around and stole the rest of the money I had from my payday loan. The was the only time I actually ever wasted the money that I had recieved a payday loan for and I needed that money to pay my state income tax in which case I ended up not having the money because it was stolen from me. I know that I did not just waste it for it was stolen but to me it is the biggest waste I have.
