If you are like most working people, you are probably stretched a little thin these days. In addition to your day to day expenses – eating, sleeping, and the like – you are probably paying out on a loan or two (car, house, student), and a credit card or three. The expenses you see every month, that you know about and can plan for, are probably taking most - if not all - of what you’ve got coming in.

But what about the expenses you can’t plan for? What about the flat tires, the emergency medical bills? What if you a lost contract, a reduction in hours, or loss of job disrupts or cuts off your income? Unfortunately your creditors don’t care about the circumstances. They will show up every month with their hands out, regardless of negative changes to your income or expenses. They will try to squeeze out late fees on top of penalties on top of interest. In fact, if they learn about a negative change to your financial health, they may try to collect faster or reduce the credit available to you, in order to manage their risk!

You see how easily things can spiral out of control with just one late payment due to an unexpected expense or missed paycheck. This is why every working person needs to keep a pair of important tools in their financial tool kit –short-term cash advances and loans (such as lines of credit). Cash advances and lines of credit are typically offered as a part of, or as an add-on service to, credit cards. They are similar in many ways – designed to give you the purchasing power of cash with the expectation that you will pay back the “cash” very quickly. Despite their short term (and theoretically less risky to the lender) nature, they often carry higher interest rates than loan products like car or house loans . This is in part because they are offered to a wider public with less investigation of your credit – less “due diligence” in banker terms – and therefore are assumed to have more risk for those lending the credit (“issuers”).

A cash advance from a credit card is as simple as using an ATM. Most credit cards can be used with major ATM networks with a PIN that your issuer sends you with the card (though for security reasons many make you request a PIN proactively.) Consumer lines of credit are more difficult to apply for, carry lower interest rates, and usually are used by writing specially issued checks sent by your bank.

As with any short-term, high-interest loan you want to be careful using these facilities. Have a plan. If you have a steady income, figure out how much you can afford to pay it down each month and set a target date to pay it off. If you have lost your income, figure out how much you can extend yourself without being unable to make at least the minimum payments.

Used properly and judiciously a cash advance or line of credit type consumer loan can save you a great deal of unnecessary expense and misery.