If someone states the purpose for taking a loan as ‘to make ends meet’, then everyone will sympathise with that individual/family. But in this market driven society where consumerism is the buzzword, people are taking loans for reasons that range from being simply absurd to totally preposterous. Be it a secured loan or an unsecured loan, purchasing either is no big deal as the providers have moved from the high streets to the living rooms of potential consumers by setting shops online.
‘Credit Action’ states that the total UK personal debt has exceeded £1 ¼ trillion and to put it mildly that amount is huge. Most of this credit is via unsecured means like unsecured loans, credit cards and other such options. If we talk about figures the approximate amount for consumer credit lending to individuals in January 2007 was somewhere in the region of £213 billion! Such is the situation at this point of time that Britain's personal debt is increasing by £1 million every 4 minutes.
This has to stop somewhere as the facility to avail loans is there for people who need funds for their enterprise or business requirements and similarly people who need to come out of some financial crisis. Something like splurging on needless shopping can be streamlined especially when the stats suggest that British women are reported to owe more than £20 billion in unsecured loans! This is something that can surely be turned around as spending billions for shopping is so very avoidable an exercise! I mean no point getting a bad credit record for an adventure in the shopping mall!
The bad credit history also creates a lot of problems in future loan transactions as lenders offering you unsecured loans tend to push the interest rates higher if you don’t have a clean credit history. So this is almost like a chain reaction kind of situation where one thing triggers the other and together all these might make your life a little difficult in this hostile world.
By: Adam Jaylin