Often unexpected expenses come up in life, catching us unawares and unprepared. When that happens, it is good to have the option of a personal loan to turn to for financial assistance.

Personal loans come in two types: secured and unsecured. Secured loans are less common. They require you to hold something for collateral, such as a car title or property. If you default on your payments, your lender is legally able to take your personal secured property.

Unsecured loans are less strict and much easier to get approved for. They require no collateral to get approved. However, they have many drawbacks to them as well, and borrowers should always know the pros and cons of their loan terms before they sign for one.

Personal Loans: What Are They Good For?

If you prefer to leave your personal property safe and not use it as collateral, you have the option of an unsecured loan. These types of loans have an easier application process and quick turnaround on distribution of money. If you need cash fast in an emergency situation, you can apply for a personal loan.

Unsecured personal loans can be applied for online from the comfort of your own home, and many times your approval or denial can be obtained in minutes.

Borrower Beware: Know the Cons of an Unsecured Personal Loan

Although there is no collateral involved in an unsecured personal loan, if you do not make your payments the lender still has recourse to take against you. They may be able to place a lien on your assets to ensure they are paid before you can sell your property.

They also may be able to take you to court and sue you for what you owe, plus legal expenses. Your credit score will be severely impacted, and your wages may even be garnished depending on the terms of the settlement.

Another drawback to unsecured personal loans is that the amounts you can receive are much smaller than secured loans. This helps limit the lenders’ financial risk. If you do not pay the loan back, they are only out a small amount.

You can also expect the interest rates to be higher if you are using a lender that does not run your credit, or approves you even with poor or bad credit. This high interest rate will make your monthly payments larger.

The terms will also be more strict if you can’t make your payments. High late payment penalties or rises in the interest rate for payments not made on time are very common with unsecured personal loans.

Weigh Your Pros and Cons

Before you sign on the dotted line, read the terms carefully. Be sure that you really need the money that you are borrowing, and that the monthly repayment terms are within your budget. Know your consequences and be willing to accept them should you end up having to default on your payments.

If you are comfortable with the cons of a personal loan, they are there for you to help you get through this difficult financial time.

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In uncertain economic times, having gold on hand is a surefire way to liquidize and protect your assets. Even in a stable economic environment, gold is a safe haven asset that will never fail you. This is because gold’s value increases instead of decreases in direct relation to the decline of value in paper investments, such as stocks and bonds.

To minimize or even eliminate a fall in portfolio value during economic collapse it’s best to invest in uncorrelated investments. What this means is that you want to own assets that will move the opposite way of other investments when economic times become uncertain. Gold is one of the few guaranteed investments that are uncorrelated to many other investments. This makes it a very safe investment that has proven to remain positive when stocks fall.

This means that allocating some of your investment to gold is a sensible and solid choice. However, the buying of gold bullion is not always as straightforward as one would hope. There are plenty of precious metal dealers who will gladly take your money without having your best interests as a customer at heart. To avoid falling for an unscrupulous dealer, you’ll have to do a little research into finding the best dealer so you can purchase gold with confidence.

Online vs. Local

In general, there are two main ways to buy gold: online or locally (in person).

Local precious metal dealers can be found in cities around the world. However, brick and mortar stores will often come with a lot of overhead. This is due to rent, paying employees, security, and more. This added overhead and the fact that local gold dealers often have lower sales volume means that they will often have to charge more for gold bullion to make up for their costs.

On the beneficial side, a local gold dealer will mean that you will be able to physically inspect the bullion and take immediate possession of it when you purchase it.

Local dealers also have more of a reason to care about their reputation in the immediate community they serve, which may translate into higher quality of service when dealing with them.

Also, if you’re only buying small quantities of gold and you’re paying for it with cash, your purchases at a local dealer might not be reported to the tax authority and can stay confidential. If this is something you are considering, make sure you discuss it with your dealer to make sure you stay below the threshold for reporting.

The other option for purchasing gold bullion is through an online dealer. Online dealers typically do more business and will have higher volumes of sale and much lower fixed costs. This means that you can often find good gold bullion at a solid discount online.

Online dealers will have a much more varied range of products in stock and many even offer convenient buy-and-store programs that permit you to purchase the gold bullion and then keep it in an insured and protected location made available by the dealer. This can be very beneficial since storing your own precious metals can be risky.

Some people are nervous buying bullion online, since it is such an expensive product. However, if you are able to find a dealer with a long, solid history and positive reviews, you will most likely be in good hands.

Unfortunately, buying gold online means that you will have to pay for shipping and handling costs (which are not cheap when it comes to materials of this value), and you will have to wait to physically take possession of your gold. Some online gold dealers like Lucius Precious Metals offer free local delivery for orders over a certain price point, which can be something to consider if you’re in the area.

What to consider when buying gold for delivery

If you are purchasing gold online and looking to have it delivered to you, you’ll want to consider a few things.

First, you want a dealer that has a strong and solid reputation and years of reliability. Read customer reviews and check out investment forums to make sure your chosen dealer doesn’t have any shady reports out on them.

You also want to make sure that the dealer sells only gold coins and cold bars from LBMA-approved wholesalers. This is your best guarantee that you will be purchasing authentic coins and bars.

You’ll also want to check out the dealer’s premiums on bullion. This can vary widely throughout the industry and is not a set-in-stone number. Lastly, check out the difference between buying and selling prices on the dealer’s site, which can be as high as 10% or more.

To maximize your long-term profits, you need to work to find a dealer who is reputable and trustworthy and offers low premiums.

What to consider when buying gold for storage

If you’re buying gold for storage, you still want to check out a dealer’s reputation, bid-ask spread, and other factors mentioned above, however there are other factors that come into play when buying gold for storage.

For one, you’ll want to examine the storage facilities where your precious metals will be kept.

Gold bullion should be stored with a reputable, separate entity so as to reduce counterparty risks. Ideally, you’re looking for an LBMA-approved vault provider like Brinks. These types of companies store gold reserves for massive financial institutions and government bodies. This assures that your gold is being stored in a secure environment.

When storing gold, make sure that your dealer offers insurance that will cover the full replacement value of your coins or bars in the event that something were to happen to them. Full replacement means that you will get back the physical equivalent of the gold lost, and not just the cash value—which is based on the spot price of the metal.

You’ll also want to make sure that your gold is fully allocated to you. This means that it is held in your name, you are the outright owner, and the gold can be made available for delivery or sale at any moment. Unallocated gold bullionis shared by investors who own an interest in the bars, which raises all kinds of liquidity issues that we recommend avoiding.

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Cash in a Flash! Well, How to Generate Funds Quickly, Anyway

Short of robbing a bank (which incidentally, we’d NEVER advocate, just for the record) there’s precious few ways to get our hands on a lump of cash in an instant. Or so you might think. However, there are far more legit ways to fund ourselves, which involve neither masks depicting former Presidents of the United States and/or a job lot of Mini Coopers, if we’re mixing our heist movie metaphors. So, what other avenues can you venture down to put your hands on a shed load of money before you can say “This is a hold up!”

Which of course, it isn’t/won’t be.

Finding ourselves short of cash at times when we need it most in our life is not unheard of. On the contrary, as most of us will experience this feeling at some point in our natural, as it can happen to pretty much anyone. Scenarios which tend to create this sense of dread and subsequent cold sweat/blind panic include unforeseen car problems, unpredicted job losses and/or an undetected illness coming to bear. The question is, who do you turn to for help in your darkest hours?

Many people would suggest that you try a good payday loan lender, and there’s many arguments as to why this would be amongst the best choices you could make when faced with this situation. But then you must also be aware that aside from payday loan lenders there are a number of alternative methods you could look into, all of which might be able to free up some much needed funds here and now. Below we take a quick look at just a few of these.

Cash in Your Life Insurance Policy – Not all of it, obviously. It’s just that should you have been in possession of a whole life insurance plan for so many years; the chances are that you’ll have accumulated a decent amount of equity that you could, hypothetically, borrow against. Understandably, if you exercise this right at this juncture, the upshot is you’ll reduce the amount paid out at a later date, but on the plus side at least you won’t be accountable for any taxes if you choose to cash out (as it were) right now.

Home Equity Loans – Adhering to a similar principle to the one outlined above re: life insurance policies, providing that you’ve paid a decent amount into your existing mortgage plan already, you could be able to borrow against the equity of your property. Reverse mortgages could also be a makeweight at this testing financial time in your life, although they only really come into play for those who own their homes outright. But as a cautionary note, it’s worth remembering that both these types of get out of jail free cards come at a price. That price being both types of short term loans to yourself will need to be repaid further down the line. Failure to do so might put your home in jeopardy.

Consider Visiting a Pawn Shop – Careful how you spell/pronounce this one, but actual pawn shops (the modern, more socially acceptable version of these being the likes of Cash Converters et al) are in the business of giving you no-questions-asked short and medium term loans. And the best bit is, there’s usually no restrictions placed on the arrangement of said loans or how you choose to spend the funds recruited. The flip side is that pawn shops only ever lend you a percentage of your item’s monetary worth, plus they do have a habit of charging significantly high interest rates. Oh, and don’t forget. If you fail to repay the loan, your possessions become the loan providers. So think on, if it’s a family heirloom you’re swapping for some much-need folding stuff. That said, if needs must there are worse ways…..

Cards are a Gift Horse – A recent study revealed that in the region of £300 million worth of gift cards went unused in the past few years, which is a staggering amount of money to be sitting on and not actually doing anything for you. Collectively, that is. There are various ways in which to cash in your unused or wanted gift cards too, where monetary recompense isn’t quite the face value, but nevertheless better than the nothing it’s generating sat in your wallet or purse.

Rent a Room out – Most people are under the wrong impression that Airbnb rentals are all about summer holidays, and homeowners who allow you to rent out their gaff whilst they themselves are away somewhere for varying lengths of time. But this couldn’t be further from the truth, as a growing number of the website’s listings encompass both extra and/or shared room arrangements. So, effectively, you still live in your house but allow other (rent-paying folk) to come and go. Works better of course, if you live in a picturesque area and not next to a cement works or something.

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You may utilize fixed-rate personal loans as an important debt consolidation tool. Such debt may include meeting some forthcoming expense or credit cards depicting higher rates. Your car or property can be used as collateral while financing a secured personal loan. On the contrary, there’s no need for collateral to back up an unsecured personal loan.

Check Out a Few Good tips to Achieve Better Rates:

Take a Look at Your Credit Score

You may achieve loans with a much lower rate of interest when you possess a higher credit score. Financial institutions don’t take any risks, but they wish to earn good returns on the money that they lend. You must assess your entire credit situation prior to applying for a loan. Your loan application stands a higher chance of being rejected if you aren’t aware of your risks. You must run your eyes through your credit report before even applying for your first quote. The three major credit reporting agencies can provide you with free copies of the same every year.

Improve the Current Credit Score

You must do all it takes to improve your credit score if it doesn’t look satisfactory in the report. Before you even set out on applying for a loan, you must get the errors rectified. You may not even recognize some of the errors like that those concerning unpaid accounts; these errors will certainly leave a strong impact on your credit score. They would even lower your chances of securing a personal loan with a lower interest rate. Likewise, you must also take care of all collection accounts and unpaid credit cards that yield a poor reflection on your report.

Do Some Smart Shopping

A credit inquiry is triggered by each loan application that you submit with a lender. Such an inquiry has an adverse effect on your credit score. Your credit score takes a major hit when you apply for multiple personal loans simultaneously. You must choose loans with credit standards that seem to be affordable for you. By visiting a lender’s website, you may easily find out the minimum credit score that you ought to have in order to submit your loan application with them.

Identify the Right Banks

Apart from a few online market-places, you may check out the prospect of obtaining a loan from banks wherein you already have a savings or checking account. If you’ve succeeded in establishing a long-term banking relationship through your first mortgage or deposits, they’re more likely to provide you with discounted rates or other great deals. Even by enabling your savings or checking accounts to allow an automated payment each month, you may achieve an extra discount.

Draw a Budget

You must check out your affordability before you even try to obtain the best rates. Prior to submitting your loan application, you must understand how much you should actually consider as a reasonable payment every month. Drawing the right budget plays a crucial role over here. You’re more likely to face a problem down the line if your budget gets stretched in order to meet your monthly payments. You don’t need to get over-stretched in order to achieve an inexpensive rate. Winding up more in terms of debt is the last thing that you’d want right now.

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Facing a legal case is a nightmare for ordinary people these days. The main reason that people try to avoid legal proceedings is the higher fees of attorneys and advocates that they have to pay for them. But a thing that provides some sigh of relief for clients is the competition between these clients to attract more people towards them. For this purpose, attorneys provide several specific and unique services.

One such tactic use by few of these attorneys is providing free legal consultation to their clients. This free consultancy on initial level is really precious in the scenario that high fee is charged on most of occasions. An ordinary person needs several clarifications before even hiring an attorney. Such free legal consultancy can be helpful in these circumstances.

But such type of free legal consultancy is not provided by all attorneys. There are several reasons for which few attorneys would like to provide free consultation to their clients. Few of these include:

• The most important reason is competition in the market. Attorneys will compete against their counterparts for which they try to lure clients towards themselves. For this purpose, several incentives are provided that may also include free consultation services. It assists them in finding new clients and turned them into their permanent customers.

• Different attorneys have different type of specialties and experiences and they like to evaluate cases that are fit for them. Through free consultation, they can easily figure out the nature of your case and its suitability for them.

• On rare occasions, it is a possibility for attorney that they are going to tackle a case of a person who has some legal issue with their previous client. In this situation, attorneys prefer to leave that case as they consider it unethical.

How to find free legal consultation?

There are several ways through which you can find and locate attorneys that provide free consultation either on general cases or specific cases related to you.

• Nowadays, most of attorneys use modern technology for progress of their business and provide important information to their potential clients. They also provide information if they are offering initial free legal consultation on their website. The easiest way to find them is by using any famous search engine through related query like free legal consultancy in New York, free PRO services in Dubai, free initial consultation etc.

• Many law firms still use and prefer advertisement on print media and electronic media for providing information about their services. You may also find the offer of free legal consultancy through these ads on newspapers and TV programs.

• Don’t limit yourself for latest techniques while finding free legal consultancy. Many lawyers still use old methods for their advertisement. Phone book is an example where you can find law firms advertising their services that may also include free initial legal consultancy for clients.

After finding these attorneys that provide free legal consultancy in your area or city, you can take further information by contacting them via email or telephone. Just make a list of all the necessary questions related to your case. This will allow you to get details about your potential lawyers and choose the best one suited for you.

Author Bio: Mona is working as a content writer in a Dubai-based consultancy firm, Riz& Mona Consultancy. She has experience of more than 6 years. During her career, she has acquired lot of experience in writing for various business and legal subjects including trade, finance, legal consultation, taxation, and others.

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