Do’s and don’ts of a payday loan

A payday loan can seem like a lifesaver when you're stuck for cash and still have a few days, or even weeks, until your wages are due. Although it's not wise to rely on borrowing to support your lifestyle, we all need a helping hand every now and again.

If an emergency strikes just when you are thinking how tight your finances are, a payday loan might be the ideal solution – especially if you won't have any problems repaying it in a few weeks time.

As with all types of borrowing, there are some do's and don'ts that are worth reading before you apply and we’ve highlighted some below.

For further information or to get some friendly advice, go online.

Do

• Think about the cost: although a payday loan might seem like your only option you must remember to pay it back. If you don't think you'll be able to afford to repay it next month then it might be worth exploring another avenue.
• Check out the lender: there has been a surge in the number of payday loan companies in recent years so it's worth taking a good look at the lender and checking whether they're a legitimate creditor. The internet is a great resource so look for information about the company and user reviews here.

Don't

• Pay late: it's absolutely essential that you are able to repay your loan in full on your repayment date as otherwise you'll end up facing additional fees and charges. Any late payments will also show up on your credit report meaning it could be harder for you to get a credit card or loan in the future.

• Worry about the APR: you might be put off borrowing with a payday loan if you see the advertised APR hitting triple figures but it's worth remembering you will only be taking out your loan for a month or two rather than over a year.

• Borrow more than you need: as payday loans are a more expensive method of borrowing than other forms of credit it's important that you only request the amount you need. If the vet bills are £500 only ask for that and no more. Chances are you will spend any additional cash you borrow and spend more in interest as a result.

In short, payday loans are a handy way to get extra cash when you're facing a big bill before your wages are due but there are things to consider. If you're unsure whether you should apply for a payday loan, look at reputable websites for payday loan information.

PAYDAY LOANS REVIEW | WHY USE PAYDAY LOANS?

Payday loans, cash advances and short-term loans are different names for the same beast. No matter what a company calls them, they are short-term loans with extremely high interest rates. In theory, payday loans seem positive. If you do not have enough money to pay pressing bills before your next paycheck, you can receive a cash advance that you pay back on your next payday along with fees and interest.

Interest rates on average range from 300% up to 800%, and you may even see rates over 1000%. APRs represent the interest paid on a full-year loan, but the term of most payday loans is only two to four weeks. Lenders use this logic to justify excessive APRs, because if you pay back your loan within the typical 14-day period, you will not pay those exorbitant rates. However, an alarming number of borrowers find they cannot pay off their loan within such a short term and therefore resort to rollovers, extensions or renewals, which is when interest and additional fees start to build to unmanageable levels.

Unfortunately, some people run into situations where they feel they have no other choice; banks deny their request and they have no friends or family to whom they can turn. If you feel you have no other choice than to take out a payday loan, we urge you to do your research and shop around to find a reputable company that offers the lowest APR and fees. Keep in mind that these high-interest loans are not for planned expenses or frivolous spending.

Many lending companies have received fines or been at the center of lawsuits for illegal lending or harassment. We remove those services from our lineup when underhanded or illegal practices come into light. Our top three services –100DayLoans, NetLoanUSA and 24/7Loan – are some of the better options if you decide you want a payday loan. For more information on short-term loans and financial advice to help you avoid them, have a look at our articles on Payday Loans.

Why Multivitamins Might Do More Harm Than Good

If you’re anything like me, taking vitamins was a part of your daily routine as a kid. At the time, I cared more about which flavor Flintstone chewable I got than the nutritional info behind the pill-sized likeness of Barney, Fred, or Wilma.

As I outgrew my beloved Flintstone chewables, I stopped taking a daily multivitamin in high school and college. But by the time I got to graduate school, I started to think more about my health and wondered if I should begin taking vitamin supplements again. As a PhD student in molecular biology, I have a habit of reading scientific studies in my spare time, so I started researching vitamin supplements to determine which ones were worth adding to my very tight budget.

I was surprised by what I found. Nutrition research can be a contentious field, with experts arguing about what’s really good for you. (Is coffee shaving years off your life or giving you a health boost?) But across the board, peer-reviewed, placebo-controlled scientific studies have consistently shown that vitamin supplements don’t prevent disease. And, in some cases, they might increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality.

Researchers, such as Regan Bailey at the National Institutes of Health, are unsure where Americans get the idea that they should take a daily multivitamin for better health. “It’s not from the doctors,” says Bailey, a nutritional epidemiologist in the NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements. “The majority of scientific data available does not support the role of dietary supplements for improving health or preventing disease.”

And yet, half of Americans today regularly take vitamin supplements.Half. Besides the obvious role of marketing, why do so many of us allow ourselves to believe that vitamins are good for us with little proof? Have we become a society that believes we can correct an unhealthy lifestyle with a daily pill?

The Need for Vitamins

When I use the term vitamin here, I’m referring to chemical compounds with the word “vitamin” in front—such as vitamin A, which helps maintain good vision—but also things like calcium, potassium, and beta-carotene that serve similar functions in the body.

There’s no denying that prolonged deficiency of certain vitamins can lead to illness and disease. The real question, though, is whether vitamin supplements are necessary for healthy individuals.

If you eat a diet full of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, there’s a good chance you already reach your suggested daily intake. And even if you eat a less-than-stellar diet, many types of processed foods are fortified with vitamins and minerals.

If you are taking a vitamin supplement in addition to eating well and consuming some fortified foods, you may be reaching vitamin levels much higher than the FDA and NIH recommend.

Multivitamins' Dark Side

To visualize the downside of overdosing on vitamins, let’s consider an analogy. Would you take a powerful antibiotic every day, just in case? That kind of attitude leads to the kind of antibiotic resistant bacteriawe've seen recently.

So why do we think it's okay to have a just-in-case attitude when it comes to multi vitamins? Certainly individuals at risk for a vitamin deficiency due to a poor diet or a preexisting medical condition should consider supplementing with a multivitamin to address that deficiency. But, if you're otherwise healthy and don't suspect a vitamin deficiency, the downsides of multivitamins easily outweigh the benefits.

Multivitamins often contain 100 percent (or more) of your recommended daily value of vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium. Unless you aren’t consuming any nutritional food at all, you simply don’t need these supplements.

Too Much of a Good Thing

So what happens when you start pumping too many vitamins and minerals into your body? Two meta-analyses of studies that collected data on the effects of multivitamin use in more than 400,000 patients found that individuals who took the daily supplement had an increased mortality rate   .

A separate 2007 study found that women who took multivitamin supplements (vitamin C, E, beta-carotene, selenium, and zinc) increased their risk of developing skin cancer  .

While it appears that multivitamin supplements may have alarming effects, can single vitamin supplements still hold benefits for the body? The quick answer: For healthy adults, probably not.

Vitamin A
Vitamin A, which helps with vision and the immune system, is found in bright yellow and orange fruits and vegetables. All you need is one-quarter cup of sweet potatoes, a third of a cup of butternut squash, or half a medium-sized carrot to get your recommended daily value. It can also be found in dark leafy vegetables: a cup of kale or two cups of spinach will also give you your daily fix. Fortified sources, like most breakfast cereals, contain about 10 percent of the recommended daily value per serving.

Too much vitamin A, ingested through beta-carotene supplements, has been shown in two separate studies to increase the likelihood of developing lung cancer among smokers   .
In one of these studies, the supplement increased the lung cancer risk by as much as 28 percent—so significant that it prompted the researchers to end the study early.

Vitamin E
Vitamin E, a great antioxidant, can be found in wheat germ, dark leafy vegetables, various nuts and seeds, and vegetable oils. A serving of typical cereal will give you nearly half your daily recommended value of vitamin E.

Like vitamin A, elevated levels of vitamin E can seriously impact your health. A study that aimed to look at the supplement's role in preventing cancer or cardiovascular disease found that excessive amounts of vitamin E increased patients' risk of heart failure  . A separate study on more than 135,000 patients found that supplemental vitamin E correlated with increased mortality rates  . The authors even went as far as to conclude that vitamin E supplementation should be avoided. Lastly, a 2011 study in over 35,000 men reported that excessive Vitamin E supplementation significantly increased the risk of prostate cancer  .

Calcium
Calcium supplements are highly recommended to women to build stronger bones as they age. They’re so pervasive that you can find them in tasty chocolate and caramel chewables, in addition to the usual tablet form. Three cups of milk and two cups of yogurt or tofu get you up to your recommended daily value of calcium. Fortified sources (two cups of soy or almond milk and a serving of cereal) provide the same benefit.

Despite all of the talk of calcium building stronger bones, a study found that calcium supplements actually increase patients risk of hip fracture  . Additionally, four separate studies found that patients who take calcium supplements were at a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease     .

Not Your Nutritional Insurance Plan

It’s too easy to think of vitamins as a “nutritional insurance plan.” If so many people take them, they must do something good, or at least not be harming our bodies, right? Doctors are catching on to the research and starting to advise against vitamin supplementation.

With that being said, remember that I specifically researched the effects of vitamin supplementation on healthy adults, aged 25-35. Although I have yet to come across any studies that said children or seniors benefit from a daily multivitamin, I didn’t look at those age groups in depth.

Also, just like any drug, vitamins can and should be prescribed for special cases. If you’re pregnant, your obstetrician/gynecologist will likely advise you to supplement with folic acid. If your doctor suspects you have a vitamin deficiency due to poor diet or a particular physiological problem, he or she might also advise you to use a specific supplement.

But for the rest of us, I simply couldn't find any real benefits to taking vitamins, and more alarming, there appears to be the potential for significant health risks to taking too much of any vitamin supplement.

This article was originally produced as part of 75toGo, a project to publish research-intensive health and fitness stories for twentysomethings looking to create good practices and habits for the decades ahead.

How Was Your Credit Card Stolen?

Almost once a week, I receive an email from a reader who has suffered credit card fraud and is seeking help figuring out which hacked merchant was responsible. I generally reply that this is a fruitless pursuit, and instead encourage readers to keep a close eye on their card statements and report any fraud. But it occurred to me recently that I’ve never published a primer on the types of card fraud and the likelihood with each of the cardholder ever learning how their account was compromised. This post is an effort to remedy that.
The card associations (Visa, MasterCard, et. al) very often know which merchant was compromised before even the banks or the merchant itself does. But they rarely tell banks which merchant got hacked. Rather, in response to a breach, the card associations will send each affected bank a list of card numbers that were compromised.
The bank may be able to work backwards from that list to the breached merchant if the merchant in question is not one that a majority of their cardholders shop at in a given month anyway. However, in the cases where banks do know which merchant caused a card to be compromised and/or replaced, the banks rarely share that information with their customers.
Here’s a look at some of the most common forms of credit card fraud:
Hacked main street merchant, restaurant:
Most often powered by malicious software installed on point-of-sale devices remotely.
Distinguishing characteristic: Most common and costly source of card fraud. Losses are high because crooks can take the information and produce counterfeit cards that can be used in big box stores to buy gift cards and/or expensive goods that can be easily resold for cash.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Low, depending on customer card usage.
Processor breach:
A network compromise at a company that processes transactions between credit card issuing banks and merchant banks.
Distinguishing characteristic: High volume of card accounts can be stolen in a very short time.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Virtually nil. Processor breaches are rare compared to retail break-ins, but it’s also difficult for banks to trace back fraud on a card to a processor. Card associations/banks generally don’t tell consumers when they do know.
Hacked point-of-sale service company/vendor:
Distinguishing characteristic: Can be time-consuming for banks and card associations to determine vendor responsible. Fraud is generally localized to a specific town or geographic region served by vendor.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Low, given that compromised point-of-sale service company or vendor does not have a direct relationship with the card holder or issuing bank.
Hacked E-commerce Merchant:
A database or Web site compromise at an online merchant.
Distinguishing characteristic: Results in online fraud. Consumer likely to learn about fraud from monthly statement, incorrectly attribute fraud to merchant where unauthorized transaction occurred. Bank customer service representatives are trained not to give out information about the breached online merchant, or address information associated with the fraudulent order.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Nil to low.

A Bluetooth enabled gas pump skimmer lets thieves retrieve stolen card and PIN data wirelessly while they gas up.

ATM or Gas Pump Skimmer:
Thieves attach physical fraud devices to ATMs and pumps to steal card numbers and PINs. For more on skimmers, see my All About Skimmers series.
Distinguishing characteristic: Fraud can take many months to figure out. Often tied to gang activity.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: High. Bank should disclose to cardholder the source of the fraud and replace stolen funds.
Crooked employee:
Uses hidden or handheld device to copy card for later counterfeiting.
Distinguishing characteristic: Most frequently committed by restaurant workers. Often tied to a local crime rings, or seasonal and transient workers.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Nil to low.
Lost/Stolen card:

Distinguishing characteristic: The smallest source of fraud on cards. Consumer generally knows immediately or is alerted by bank to suspicious transactions, which often involve small test transactions to see if the card is still active — such as at automated gas station pumps.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: High.
Malware on Consumer PC
Distinguishing characteristic: Malicious software that hooks into the victim’s browser, and records all data submitted into Web site forms, including credit card information. Leads to authorized online charges.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Discovering the infection? Fairly good. Definitively tying card-not-present card fraud to a malware infection? Very low.
Physical record theft:
Merchant, government agency or some other entity charged with storing and protecting card data improperly disposes of card account records.
Distinguishing characteristic: Usually not high-volume. Less common form of fraud than it used to be.
Chances of consumer learning source of fraud: Nil to low.

I hope it’s clear from the above that most consumers are unlikely to discover the true source or reason for any card fraud. It’s far more important for cardholders to keep a close eye on their statements for unauthorized charges, and to report that activity as quickly as possible.