Can you imagine being eager to pay outrageous amounts of interest? Do you ever see yourself gladly making monthly payments on loans and advances to a greedy finance company? Would you like to love a loan shark? Impossible? No, it's not! All you have to do is become your own banker or private credit union. You'll be borrowing from yourself, making payments to yourself, and collecting high rates of interest -- all on you.

This idea simplifies the credit union strategy back down to just one person: you. And with you wearing the loan officer hat, the borrowing and repayment benefit only you. What a savings program!

How does it work? First, open a special savings account. Don't get this confused with your contingency fund or investment programs. You already should be saving consistently for the future in those ain't-nobody-ever-going-to-touch-it kind of accounts. This savings account I'm talking about will be managed differently.

You can start your new account with anything, but you should feed it with a weekly contribution for a while. If you can put in $20 a week for 12 months, you'll have about $1,000 after a year.

Let's say you need to borrow $600 of that $1,000. A typical finance company would charge a whopping 21 percent interest, or $126, to borrow that amount. They'd "let" you pay it back at the rate of about $30 a month for two years, for a total payback amount of $726.

You could be easier on yourself. If you charge 18 percent interest on your loan ($600 x 18 percent equals $108) and divide it into 12 equal payments of $59, then your loan will be paid off in just one year, "costing" a total of $708. And the greedy finance company will be you!

If you keep up your weekly deposits of $20 while you pay back your loan, you'll have something like $2,150 in the bank at the end of the second year ($400 you didn't borrow in year one plus the $708 you paid back plus the $1,040 you deposit in year two).

Maybe then you'll need to borrow $1,000 from your lovable loan shark. A finance company would charge about $255 to do that. But if you charge yourself $180 and make monthly payments of $50 for two years (or $100 a month for one year), you'll wind up with more than $3,000.

As the borrower, treat yourself the same way that the finance company would. Demand timely payments. If you miss a payment, call yourself and try out your best harassment methods. Establish horrendous penalties for late payments. Unless you're terribly hard on yourself, it's not going to work. You'll default. And just imagine how that will look on the record of your psyche.

But if it does work, you'll be living the life of a banker -- buying things you want and piling up the dough.

Mary Hunt is the founder of DebtProofLiving.com and author of 17 books, including "Debt-Proof Living." You can e-mail her at mary@everydaycheapskate.com, or write to Everyday Cheapskate, P.O. Box 2135, Paramount, CA 90723. To find out more about Mary Hunt and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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