When you lend money to a friend, you are always happy when they repay you quickly.
Short term loans to your family and friends are always the best kind of loans.
Banks and lending institutions, however, have an altogether different outlook on this type of loan.
They are happiest when they can tie us into a long term agreement with penalties for early repayment and long steady interest being included in every monthly repayment.
Interest is the factor that separates the two situations.
You are glad to have the money back from your friend as you are not charging him interest.
The loan company, however, do not particularly want their money back as it will not be earning them a nice high interest rate unless they send it out to work! There are many reasons that you may wish to take out short term loans.
It could be as a bridging loan between house purchase and sale or it could be a pre-bonus loan.
Maybe it is just for a impulse buy at the travel agents.
Whatever the reason, if you need to get hold of some money and only want to borrow for less than a year, for example, you may find that you are being quoted very high interest rates.
You may find that you have other options which are available to you rather than taking out one of the expensive short term loans.
If you are considering using the money to buy goods from a store, you may be able to open a store card with them directly.
The interest rates for this may be more reasonable and there will be no penalty for early repayment.
Another alternative is using your credit card.
If you have at least one credit card then you may be able to put the purchase onto to either one or perhaps two of the cards.
Alternatively, if you are eligible, you could consider having a further card with a different credit card company.
Sometimes you can get very good deals when opening with a company.
If you have an overdraft at the bank, it may be possible to increase this at very little cost.
This would give you one of the cheapest short term loans and it is very flexible when it comes to repayments in that it just stays there until you stop using it.
If you do not have an overdraft then it should be easy to set one up with the bank.
They do not always agree to this and will take your earnings and outgoings into account.
If you are successful then you will probably find that you will have the overdraft facility for as long as you wish.
Short term loans are often very expensive and sometimes you end up paying as much as it you had a long term loan.
This is something that you should carefully research.
Do not just assume that the loan company will be pleased to have their money back!