Find the Best Payday Loan

Want to get crazed in a hurry? Be in a position where you really, really need a fast payday loan. Then type "payday loan" into your favorite search engine. Then, try to make a decision. No joke, the best time to plan for a disaster is before it happens. So while you meditate on that, consider what you need in that payday loan.

You need money. In five days, on payday you could repay the entire payday loan without having dogfood for supper for the next two weeks. Online, you'll find some payday loans funded practically immediately during regular business hours. For others, or if it's after banks are closed, you have to wait until the next day when the virtual "paperwork" is processed. Surprised? After all, these are loans for emergencies. And, true emergencies require assistance right now.

You need a lender with a good reputation. Throughout life, you need good, reliable professionals who do what they say they'll do, won't cheat you, and treat you like a good customer. Although they're doing you a "favor," they are in the payday loan business, with the emphasis on business, and you are the customer. Check with your friends, the Better Business Bureau and your state's attorney general, to find out.

You need an interest rate (or fees as the payday loan lenders call them) that you can afford. Do shop around on this one. By law, they are required to convert that fee into an annual percentage rate. In practice, they are allowed to bury it in the fine print. A fee of $10 per $100 expands to an actual percentage rate of 260.71% for 14 days. But a fee of $30 per $100 becomes an APR of 782.14% for the same 14 days.

You need to know that you won't go to jail if you're late repaying. The system of requiring a post-dated check kicks an unpaid payday loan out of the realm of finance and into criminal behavior. Not all states allow this, but some do. How it works is this: you give the fast cash place that post-dated check. On that date they try to cash it, but it bounces. After two more tries, with returned check fees accumulating both at the bank and with the lender, the payday loan company turns it over to the county attorney for prosecution for passing bad checks. That's criminal and you can go to jail for it.

You need to know if you can get a loan in your state because they're prohibited in 14 states. Your state's website should be able to tell you that, too. Usually, a payday loan website will say that it is doing business out of New Mexico or Arizona and that any transactions that take place occur there. Apparently, this side step works.

That's the grocery list for the best fast payday loan. And you better get a pencil out to check them off as you peruse the web. In no time you'll be the expert, winnowing out the good from the not so good from the downright bad.