What are hard money loans? These are privately financed loans that can be used for real estate investing. Hard money loans are short term, most only for 6 to 24 months. The interest rates are high, usually 12% to 18%. However, if you intend to resell the property fast, then you will only be paying the high interest for a short time. If you intend to keep the property and rent it out, then hard money would not be the way to go.

Not all properties would qualify for hard money financing. The private lenders will want to determine the property value after repairs and then will finance usually 60% to 70% of that. As an example, a property is selling for $50,000.00 with $10,000.00 needed in repairs with an after repair value of $90,000.00. If you can find a hard money lender to finance 70% ($63,000.00), then this would pay the $50,000.00 asking price plus the $10,000.00 in repairs with $3,000.00 remaining.

Some benefits with getting a hard money loan are as follows:

1. In some circumstances you can get 100% of the money you need if the purchase price is less than the 70% of the after repair value. Your only expense would be the closing costs on the loan.

2. These loans are made fast, usually closing within 10 days. If you are in a situation where you need to close fast, then a hard money loan could be the way to go.

Some things to consider when getting a hard money loan is how many points you have to pay at closing. A point is 1% of the loan amount. The points could be anywhere from 2 to 10. Be sure and find this out up front as you will need to have this amount at closing.

As with a conventional loan, some hard money lenders will charge a prepayment penalty. Verify this and the amount of the prepayment penalty as you will need to consider this when figuring your profit.

Where can you find a hard money lender? Most mortgage companies will have a list of these lenders. Also real estate investment clubs will usually have some attend the meetings, plus some of the other real estate investors at the meetings will have connections with some hard money lenders. The newspapers will usually list classified such as “private lender” or “money to lend”. You can also do a Google search for hard money lenders and will come up with many sites.

Hard money loans are not for every real estate investing deal, but sometimes when you need to turn over a property fast and it will need a lot of repair, then this type of loan could be a good option.

Home budgeting isn’t always as easy as some books or experts try to make it out to be. The fact is that while there are some good guidelines to follow at the end of the day both your income and expenses do change from time to time making it very hard to stick to a budget 100%.

There are unexpected bills, illnesses and sometimes life gets in the way. Don’t feel bad if you struggle to get on top of your finances. This is a struggle that many of us have to live with every day.

A common option is to take out a personal loan to bridge the home budgeting money gap. Done wisely this can be a good solution but it does carry plenty of risks and of course you could end up paying high interest and even digging yourself further into debt.

So before you take the plunge and sign up for a personal loan just make sure you have checked out these options. You might not be able to avoid taking out a loan entirely but you might be able to reduce the amount you need to borrow.

Clear Your Clutter

Sell those old books, CDs and DVDs you have lying around. Some people make a full time income finding old books at yard sales, buying them for pennies and selling them on Amazon. You often won’t make much on the book itself but Amazon pays you a set shipping and handling fee. This fee is more than enough to cover the packaging and postage and you are legally allowed to take the balance for your time and effort.

I know folks who send out 50+ books a day, it adds up and puts food on the table.

Make More Money

This is the method I used to get out of my home budgeting problems. If you’ve got some spare time and energy then there are some good options for you to earn more income.

If you like talking to people you could try Avon or Mary Kay many of their products are in demand, are trusted and not hard to sell.

People and businesses always need help with all sorts of services. Think about things you know how to do. It could be cleaning, translating documents, book keeping, painting anything you are good at. Ask your local businesses if they’ve got any odd tasks or things they are struggling with you will find some way to help out. Remind them you are not looking for a job but offering a service.

We all know the importance of getting out of debt. In fact people who are struggling with high interest debt must make eliminating that debt their top priority. The road to financial stability however does not end there. Managing your money responsibly is the only way to avoid future debt issues and increase your financial security through solid savings strategies. Fortunately there are many online