As of late times are tough financially, the rise in costs of living as well as many job cuts throughout multiple industries has left many people wondering how they'll cope. Initially small increases in gas and electricity and other fuels like petrol were an inconvenience but now they are a slow puncture on our finances.

It's not only there that we are losing cash, food prices have gone up and as of October the financial world has been in serious trouble with many banks being bailed out by government loans due to a lifestyle that seemed to be run solely on credit cards and loans.

Now that many people have fell victim to this "credit crunch" it is increasingly tough for those that need some form of lending for genuinely desperate reasons but because the past ten years many people have spent loans and credit card lending on frivolous things, banks are now reluctant to lend to anyone.

Does this mean that now when we are in need of a loan that we cannot get one? Well, no there are still plenty of loans being touted by the banks despite them not being so in your face in TV adverts these days. The thing is that many loans providers are being extra careful once they have dished out the loan amount with higher interest rates which may come back to haunt some borrowers.

One area that has suffered especially is the personal loans market which has seen interest rates increase threefold from an average rate of 10.65% at the beginning of the year to 29.4%, the number of loans being offered at under 10% has dropped from 105 products to just 57 showing that the best deals on loans have certainly decreased over such a short time.

One area that seems to be immune to the problems that low interest loans are suffering from is higher risk loans. These obviously have higher rates of interest and so banks are not holding back when offering these loans but those with poor credit histories going for these loans can look forward to interest rates as extreme as 70%.

In general if you have a less than perfect credit rating then you don't want to make it any worse by accepting large interest unsecured loans and failing to meet the payments, all it takes is one slip up and it could easily spiral out of control and cause more damage than it does good.