There’s hardly anything worse than finding yourself in a situation where you need access to quick cash, but life happens and month after month thousands of Canadians find themselves in a pinch and type the term Quick Cash into the search engines with the hope of finding relief.

There’s both good news and bad news for you to be on the lookout for if you’re on the hunt for some quick cash to tide you over until you get back on your feet. There’s an abundance of cash you can get your hands on, but fast doesn’t necessarily mean good.

So let’s start by talking about the bad side of the quick cash that’s available Canadian borrowers – payday loans. Now this is a bear trap just waiting to clamp down on you. Payday loans are a quick fix for financial problems that typically end up causing a lot more harm than good in the long run.

How so?

The interest rates are astronomical – higher than any other form of loan out there. You can expect to pay anywhere between 300 to 400% interest on payday loans and the terms are designed to ensure that you fail so that these lenders can maximize profit.

One in five payday loan borrowers find themselves defaulting when trying to repay the principal and interest in the two-week window that happens to be the typical term for a payday loan. Once that default occurs, the carnage begins.

Consumers fall into a brutal cycle of debt and wind up paying up to four times the amount they had initially borrowed. Be sure to keep that in mind next time you’re looking for quick cash – it could cost you more than what you expect.

Now, just in case you think that payday loans were your only option outside of conventional banks and now you’ve got nowhere else to turn, we’ve got good news for you. You can pocket some quick cash by way of installment loans.

What makes installment loans more appealing than loans you’d get from a standard bank is that approval is granted very rapidly and even consumers with bad credit can qualify to get them. Unlike payday lenders, private lenders offering installment loans provide far wider windows of time for repayment.

LoanAway, for example, offers its customers up to 36 months to repay their loans. We also understand that “life happens”, so if you find yourself unable to meet a payment on time, you simply have to reach out to our customer service reps to reschedule the payment without having to pay any penalties.

How quick is the cash coming from LoanAway? Fast. Really fast. Our online application will take you only 8 minutes to fill out – that is one of our industry-leading features. You can then be approved as quickly as within 30 minutes. Once approved, that quick cash can find it’s way to your account as soon as 24 hours after initially filling out the application.

Next time you find yourself need a rapid infusion of cash, choose LoanAway for affordable, flexible loans that will actually help you.