In these tough economic times, it is getting harder and harder to make it from paycheck to paycheck for most of us.As usual there are a growing number of businesses cropping up to “help” people make it through to that next check.

You have gotten the emails and even text messages, promising up to $1500.00 in as little as one hour. They make it so easy. It will go directly into your bank account, and they will even set up all of your repayments to come out automatically. With just a few keystrokes and the click of a mouse, and you can breath until your next paycheck.

Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Maybe it even sounds too good to be true? Of course “up to” $1500.00 hardly ever means $1500.00. It is more like between $100.00 and $500.00 dollars they will give you for your first loan. But lets face it, when the light bill is due on Monday before they shut your power off, and the kids need to eat, and you do not get paid for another two weeks, it is easy to put in that information and give it a shot. They fine print may not seem so important when you are facing those circumstances, but not reading it can cost you more than you could imagine in the long run.

You will be offered several options to repay, even an option sensitive to the fact that you may hit a rough patch here and there where you could just pay a small amount to keep your loan from being delinquent, but none of that payment will be applied to your principal balance due. To make it even easier for you, unless you tell them otherwise, they will be ever so happy to just take that minimum payment amount, and before you know it, you have paid them $500.00 for your $500.00 loan and you will then only be left with a balance of… $500.00.

The fine print will show that you could be paying in excess of 300% interest on that little loan to help you breath easy. The fact is that if you accept one of these loans to help you get through until payday, you are going to be short for many more paychecks to come.

It seems to be an unfortunate irony that the less money you have, the more it costs you to live. Those of us that need an extra couple of hundred dollars to make it to payday do not have the many, many hundreds of dollars it will take to pay off one of those loans. So what may seem like a good solution at the time may end up making your overall financial situation much worse in the end.

Even in the toughest of times, especially in the toughest of times, you have to protect yourself by always reading the fine print. Exhaust any and every other means to make it through without jeopardizing your future financial stability.