Half of British Citizens Don't Have £300 to Pay an Unexpected Bill!

The Money Advice Service found recently that nearly half of all UK households don’t have enough money to pay for an unexpected bill of £300 or more. Just think what £300 would buy you! It’s not much.

What’s the excess of your car insurance and how much is a replacement fridge or cooker? And what if you need a plumber to come and fix a leak or blocked pipe?

It gets worse. One in five people in the UK have NO SAVINGS AT ALL, said Alan Tovey in the Daily Telegraph this week. According to the 2011 census, that makes nearly 10 million adults without any savings at all.

It has been a hard eight years for most of us. For those lucky enough to be working, wage have stagnated, fuel, heating and food prices have all been going up, and only home owners have benefitted from low interest rates. Plus many people in the UK have had their credit score affected by missed payments on credit cards or overdrafts. And with a bad credit rating or even a poor credit rating it can be much harder to get access to short-term credit.

Even when income stabilises and people want to consolidate debt in to a cheaper loan, the ghost of CCJs and historic damage to credit scores can make applying for a loan an intimidating process. Until recently, just applying for a loan and being rejected for having a bad credit history, further damaged the applicant’s credit history.

Need Money for Bills? Here's Our Answer 

It is the working people that need access to emergency, short-term credit. If legitimate, regulated, emergency, short-term credit disappears, where do these 10 million turn to get access to the funds they need for the emergency they face? It won’t be to the people that abide by the payday cap of 0.8% max interest per day, a total cost of credit limited to 100% of the original loan amount. And no they won’t allow customers to check out rival deals to see if they offer a better rate.

So we at FairMoney^TM have set up to show you how fair loan deals can be for the customer regardless of their credit score.

• FairMoney^TM rank only by APR
• FairMoney^TM offer a footprint free search facility
• FairMoney^TM only show you payday style loans if you choose to see them
• All members of the FairMoney^TM lending panel members are regulated and abide by the FairMoney Promise
• FairMoney^TM present loans that are the best fit for your circumstances

Help Us Help You!

Our founder is looking for people who would like to share their experiences of unfair lenders for an investigation he is conducting.

For us, unfair means, not complying with the FCA and CMA regualtions (e.g. the Payday Cap), not being clear on fees and charges, sites not being what they lead you to believe they are or deliberately failing to making you aware of other types of loan that would have suited your situation better.

If you would like to take part, have any questions about help with money problems or have ideas for a blog topic, tweet us on @fairmoneytweets.We'd love to hear from you!

(main image: Jacob Edward under CC BY 2.0)