The spate of credit card offers and leaflets that most of us receive through the post or in our daily newspapers, which promise us unlimited spending power and in some cases blank cheques, has threw up a major surprise and that is the way that small businesses are using personal credit cards that you or I use for granted in our daily personal use, to finance their business practices.
Many are doing this to the tune of almost £2 Billion a month and this is not getting spent on business expenses that they can claim back from the company coffers. The biggest uses are travel or entertainment. The personal credit cards are being used to fund the workings of the everyday running of the business and in some cases the company car is being charged to the credit card.
This has all come about because of the easy access to credit card lenders funds, which are put under our noses at every turn. You cannot even go to a supermarket or shopping mall without being accosted by some credit card sales representative offering you the chance of spending someone else’s cash.
So all in all it is hardly surprising that many people who either have to fund a small business or wish to start one, would feel this to be an easier road to go down, rather than sitting in front of the local friendly neighbourhood bank manager and having to explain all the little details on why you need a loan, while asking you to offer up guarantees. The guarantees enable them to be able to get their cash back and this could mean putting your home up as collateral if it all backfires.
So all of this makes the applying for the credit cards the easy option, as it quite easy to apply to credit cards and see yourself with a spending power of thousands and thousands of pounds with an amount as much as £50,000 easily attainable. So much easier than applying to the bank for this amount of backing! There a simple reason for this and that is that the bank, even if you think that they are killing your business plan, have to look at all the pros and cons to your claim and will access things that may even go wrong that you have not even considered or put into your business plan, before they will loosen the purse strings.
By doing this, the banks are also protecting you, yep that’s right protecting you from any irresponsible borrowing that may lead to you falling into a debt that you simply cannot find away out of. By going to the bank, you will be protecting yourself personally and if you are going the way of a limited company, with the assets of the business alone being the sole contributor of any debts owed, where as if you go down the personal credit card route, you will in no doubt find that a couple of big burly bailiffs, will come a Knocking at your door and start taking stock of you and your families belongings and that would be a tad more harder to take than a NO from your bank manager.
