Hi all,

It’s been a busy few weeks (yeah i always say that), anyway…

Here some positive news which should filter across the pond to us judging by the current trends:

Citigroup plans to use some $36.5 billion of its U.S. government capital infusion for new mortgages, credit card loans and to buy mortgage-backed securities in the coming months.

On Tuesday it will give details of how it will increase lending by using funds provided under TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) the CEO said. Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said “Our responsibility is to put these funds to work quickly, prudently and transparently to increase available lending and liquidity,” although Citi could not be reached for comment at this time.

Other U.S. banks rescued by bailouts are under pressure to deliver lending to help the tight credit markets and spark a recovery in the economy. They received $45 billion in capital from the U.S. Treasury in two installments late last year.

Citi’s management will allot $25.7 billion for U.S. residential mortgages, $5.8 billion to credit card loans, $2.5 billion for personal and business loans, $1.5 billion for corporate loans and $1 billion for student loans, the AP report said. The final $8.2 billion will be mortgages issued to homeowners.

Good news eh?

As a side note i’ve been currently very busy helping my friend with his SEO site Increase My Ranking the reason i mention this is that he’s had to branch out from his financial sites on payday loans etc into SEO until things recover. Which hopefully they will..

Thanks for reading,

Derek

Hi guys,

I’m not even going to say how busy i’ve been – i’m getting sick of typing it.

Last time i promised i’d tell you about an exciting new project (well in fact there’s two currently but this one is almost live) – Word Bricks.

This is a new idea in online marketing. Basically you buy a virtual brick which you can customise with some text and make it so that when someone clicks it, they’re taken to your site.

Now nothing is free in this world but a £2 admin fee seems pretty fair to me.

Anyway more on this later. For now go take a look at how the Virtual Wall of Links is shaping up

Regards,

Derek

Hi all,

its been a little while but i’ve been busy on two exciting new projects. I’ll tell you about the first one next week.

Anyway, i thought id share a little good cheery news in these slight financially bleak times. One of the non-prime lenders (as in a lender for those of us with a less than perfect credit history) has followed the major banks and made an interest rate cut. These are purely for homeowner loans but the rate is now just 9.9%. Thats right Blackhorse (Just for Homeowners) have reduced their minimum APR for all Unsecured Loans from 16.9% to 9.9%, With immediate effect.

Nice to share a little good news.

p.s. christmas payday loans are available in time for Christmas!

I came across this article the other day and i must admit i was pretty amazed:

Just show that even the big names aren’t quite as thorough with the lending process as you expect them to be. In today’s troubled financial climate it can often to be better to go through a loan broker anyway. They’ll often come up with a better figure and since they’ve have to follow pretty strict guidelines to even get a consumer credit license – you can expect them to lend responsibly.

Obviously this isn’t the case with payday loans. You don’t have to worry about any of that since the loan isn’t secured on anything and is just simply an advance on your wages (effectively).

Anyway, enough from me for now.

Stay Safe,

Derek

P.S. If you’re having trouble getting out of debt then try these guys – the service is free!

I was speaking to a friend the other day about all this financial doom and gloom. He’s a bit of an exper on all that stuff. He waffled on about inflation and leverage.

Went over my head mostly but anyway…. It got me thinking. Can anyone actually get a loan at the minute? I mean surely somebody can or what are all the lenders doing. High Street banks, Lombard direct or even the sharks (not mentioning names for those). So i popped onto the website of my favourite Loan Broker for secured loans and what did i find? Well within 2 days the payworking was winging it’s way to me. I actualy didn’t go through with the loan in the end – but it proves it isn’t all doom and gloom

Ok i’d better not mention Iceland – oops.

Anyway payday loans are still definately an option. They don’t really rely on funding from the ‘big boys’ and you don’t even need a credit check.

Ok off to what the football. Come on England!

Until next time…

Derek

Anaylsts were divided yesterday on whether Britain’s £250 billion) plan to prop-up some of the banks would be enough or it was inadequate.

The current plan is to use £50bn of taxpayers’ money to buy major portions of the country’s eight major financial institutions. This will provide short-term loans and issue a government guarantee on loans between the banks. The Bank of England will also be extending a £200bn line of credit for the banks.

The British bank plan itself – which covers Abbey, Barclays, HSBC Bank, HBOS, Lloyds TSB Bank, Nationwide Building Society, RBS and SC Bank – has had a mixed impact on shares in banks. Analysts seemed equally unconvinced of its effectiveness.

David Woo and Paul Robinson of Barclays Capital say “It will help UK policymakers get ahead of the crisis” They are part of the investment banking arm of Barclays, one of the participating banks.

But Howard Wheeldon of BGC Partners noted that the plan would have been more welcome if it had been earlier.

He said: “Perhaps a belated round of applause is probably the best way to greet the UK government plan aimed at providing much-needed financial market stability.”

Some lobby groups and union leaders were also displeased that Britain was using government funds to rescue so- called “fat cats” working for the country’s banks. — S apa-AFP

More info soon.

Derek – Payday Loans

Well the good news is that i should get my damage deposit back but not all of it and not any time soon. Anyway i’ll come back to that. I’ve had some more thoughts about the credit crunch and secured homeowner loans.

I discovered something interesting today. Checking your credit rating with somewhere like Credit Expert can show you that you’ve paid everything dodgy (defaults, ccj’s) but until you actually get a certificate from the court then you might as well not have paid them off at all. Something i didn’t know anyway.

Another point of note is that although i’d probably not get a really low APR loan from somewhere like Lombard. I am able to get a loan from my bank and at a decent enough rate too. Places likes Loan Machine for homeowner loans can help find if there’s anyone who can lend you at all. There usually is even in these times.

Anyway back to my deposit and moving problems. Basically in a nutshell moving has left me with such a cash flow problem that i had to get a short term or “pay day” loan from Today Loanquick loans. Payday loans are not as bad as some of the press are making out. The apr is high if you calculate it over a year but the loans are only 1-2 months so APR is meaningless. They’re perfect for cash flow problems!

Anyway enough from me for now.

Derek

Ok so i didn’t buy a house in the end. Seems like a dumb time to do it with house prices still falling 0.5% month after month.

One thing i didn’t consider at first was the fact that the rent market would get better and better – for tenants that is.

For only a small amount extra i could get a place roughly 50% bigger – so that’s what i did. Unfortunately since it was a great deal i had to snap it up there and then. This means i wasn’t able to give enough notice to the old letting agency. We’re in negotiations now but they’re saying i need to pay another whole month of rent even thoug him only short about 10 days of the full notice period.

Well that ain’t happening.

I guess we’ll see how generous i’m feeling after i’ve got my damage deposit back (fingers crossed).

Anyway the point of all this is that moving house tends to leave you with a bit of a cashflow problem. ie. pay rent on the old place, the new place + deposit and any rent in advance. Plus the obvious costs of packaging and transporting of your belongings. I was looking at solutons to this and came across Quick Loans from Today Loan. This place can lend you money within a day that you basically payback when you get paid. You can even roll it over to the next month for 2 months until you’re straightened out again.

In cases like the one i’m in you don’t (and probably can’t) really want to get a Secured Loan and it’s not a bad enough debt problem for debt management etc so a short term, not questions asked (well, very few) loan seems the answer.

Payday Loans are getting some bad press lately and it doesn’t seem deserved to me.

I’ve recently changed job and i got a fair bit of capital back from a shares scheme so that got me thinking about getting a house.

I still don’t have a huge deposit but i soon will.

How long do i wait before i get one i wonder?

After speaking to many friends and reading many newpaper articles it seems the magical time is in 10 months. Hmm, well i guess we’ll see on that one. That last thing i want to do is get a mortgage and then be trapped in negative equity 6 months later.

I guess thats the risk you take. I’ll be able to get Homeowner Loans at last i guess.

Derek

I had a friend, lets call him Mr R, who’s being working through getting a secured loan for months now so i thought i’d explain some of the stage this went through to take some of the fear and mystery out of the whole process.

Now some lenders claim to ‘have the money in your bank account in 24 house’ – now i’m sure this happens when someone has a glowing credit rating, meets all of their criteria exactly and has nice simple easy-to-understand finances. The reality is: This isn’t usually the case.

Mr R filled out a brief form (at Homeowner Loans as it happens) and a friendly member of staff called him back to get some more details.

Since he didn’t have a perfect credit rating he only had a couple of options but there were still options. Then he was given quotes on these lenders (amount per month, total amount payable, duration etc).

One of these seemed suitable so the next step was to get a valuation of his property. This was done to see how much the lenders would be able to lend him. Usually most reputable lenders will lender you up to 70-80% of the value of the house. Now it not as simple as “oh i have a £100,000 house so i can borrow a secured loan amount of £70-80,000″ since it depends how much mortgage you have outstanding.

The friend in question had £40,000 or so left on his house and some unsecured debt he wanted to consolidate. This meant that despite his house being worth £125,000 he could only borrow £30,000 (which was fine in his case). By this time another valuation we required and another cool-off period was required (a 7 day period that the lender must not contact the client).

This whole process took nearly 3 months but my friend was happy with the result and he didn’t feel pushed into anything.

Hopefully that removes some of the mystery for some of you