One of the things that scares me a lot is the proliferation of businesses like Little Payday that are cropping up on almost every second or third block downtown. Because of the struggling economy, more and more people are turning to short term loans to help them pay for things that they really need, like groceries and rent.

The problem with doing this type of loan is that if you are not able to pay it back within a few days of borrowing the money, you end up paying an enormous amount of interest, and by the time you are finished paying it off, you end up spending three or four or even five times the amount of money that you borrowed in the first place! Trust me, I am not a big fan of eating peanut butter and jelly every day, but if that is what it is going to take to make ends meet for a few weeks, it might be smarter to restrict yourselves to eating cheaper food for a while in order to prevent yourself from being trapped into a never-ending debt. Please folks, be really careful if you try to get a short term personal loan. Read the fine print carefully and make sure you understand all of the costs.