I’ll admit I don’t know much about PayDay loans, I just avoid them like the plague. So when a commenter posted a very interesting 4-part series from the Motley Fool about the merits of payday loans in my previous post, it made me think: who is actually getting these loans? If I were to guess, it would be someone making barely over the poverty line and just trying to make ends meet. According to the Fool.com article, last year 5 million people got these type of loans, and paid $3.4 billion in interest and fees! 5 million people? So about 2% of the U.S. population got one? Yet the default rate is only 2%. Hmm…

Google Answers is a site where you post a question and how much you’re willing to pay to get it answered. The cool thing is that after it’s answered it’s posted online for all to see. One guy offered $200 for information about opening up his own payday advance/check cashing shop. The answers were very interesting –
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Jim of Blueprint For Financial Prosperity and Nev of Neville’s Financial Blog were interviewed recently in a huge article in the New York Times today in an article called ‘Psst: Want to Know My Net Worth?‘ (annoying registration may be required). Nice job Nev and Jim!

Most people know Payday Loans are a bad idea. Except for, of course, the people that use them. This weekend I saw one of these places having a free BBQ outside their store, with a decent turnout. I can already imagine the banner: “Pay 600% APR interest, Start your downward spiral into debt, and get a Free Hot Dog!” Anyways, I guess it was just a matter of time before these guys went online. Bankrate.com just ran an article titled ‘Online payday loans: Borrower beware‘, outlining the many pitfalls of online payday loans. Besides the outrageous interest rates and numerous fees, you have:

• You have to give them all your personal information, including name, address, Social Security number, and the routing number and account number of your checking account. The idea is they deposit the loan money in there, and then suck it back up plus fees after payday. But what if they decide to suck more?
• It can be very very difficult to actually figure out where the online lender is located. They can easily be outside the country (and outside the reach of law enforcement).

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A family situation has come up, and I will be out of town for the next several days. Please redirect any good wishes towards New Orleans. I’m glad that I have the means to buy a last-minute ticket across the country if that is what I need to do. Please forgive any delays in answering e-mails, etc.

Being Poor. Lots of buzz around it, hundreds of comments too.

One line that struck me was:

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.

I don’t feel I’ve ever been poor at all, but I used to not invite my friends over because I was ashamed to show them our family’s small 2 bedroom apartment (which was smaller than the apartment my wife and I currently live in together alone), while they lived in big nice houses. I wonder if my parents ever knew. I hope not, they’ve provided me with more than I could ever ask for.

Anyways, read the post and the interesting comments too. Don’t miss the last line of the post.

Update: More comments here.

* Found via a commenter, Kyle Welsh’s blog. Thanks Kyle!

I wish the real carnival came to town this often too… but the next best thing, this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and Carnival of the Capitalists are up. Is it just me or does every time I read “carnival” I think “funnel cake”? Maybe it’s just my diet talking.

I finally managed to put up a new site layout, to look more like my other blog, MyHealthBlog. The redesign was inspired by the clean 3-column formats of such blogs as LifeHacker, Blog Herald, The Daily Bite, and Jalopnik. Yes, it is 5am, and yes, I have been up since 8am. I’m not so slick with the html. Due to that and my overall weariness, please let me know if I broke something!

Carnival of Personal Finance #11 is up. Check it out at AllThingsFinancial‘s new blog!

…is the sound my hard drive made yesterday. Well, more of a clicking, but either way I think it’s dead. Warranty expired too. I’m glad I still have my laptop. At least I backed up everything recently. Should I get a new hard drive, or a whole new computer? They are so cheap these days, you can get a new Dell computer with a 17″ flat panel LCD for under $500. But my Pentium 3 seems just fine for everything I do, I don’t know what I need an extra 2,000 MHz for. I guess it helps out people who like to play video games, but those LCDs are calling out to me…

If you’ve been visiting this site within the last hour, you’ve probably seen some funky things going on while I tested out new background images and colors (even bright pink!). I ended up taking a picture of… what else? My money! My $20 bill to be exact. I wanted to take a picture of a $100 bill, but I don’t carry that kind of bankroll around. What do you think? I think it adds a little somethin’-somethin’.

This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Consumerism Commentary. Check it out!

This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance is up at InCashFlowWeTrust. Check it out, lots of submissions this week, even I somehow managed to do it.