Eric's Credit Community

My name is Donald and I live with my wife and seven children in the Kansas City area. My interest in photography began in the mid 1980?s while in high school where I was the photo editor for both the school newspaper and yearbook. In 1986 I photographed Halley?s Comet from locations around Miami, traveling there with a group of armature astronomers. Over the last few years I have been doing portraits and weddings on the side, my main source of income right now is my job as a computer programmer where I bring home about $4600/month.

I have had my portrait/wedding business nearly double over the last year and I see great potential for this to become a thriving business in the near future. I believe that I have a two major competitive advantages over other photographers in the area first of all I do both studio and on-location portrait sessions with very competitive sitting and travel fees. Secondly, in addition to the portrait and wedding photography I also do fine arts photography thus I am able to provide my customers with a level of artistry that other portrait/wedding photographers in the area lack.

The purpose of this loan is to help me purchase upgraded equipment. With other photographers in my area being able to boast 10 and 12 megapixel cameras potential customers see my 6 megapixel camera as being out dated and this has hampered my ability to compete for some better, higher paying, jobs.

I will use this loan to purchase a new Nikon D200 DSLR camera body, which is Nikons advanced DSLR camera, which sells for $1699.95. The D200 has the professional quality features that need to become more competitive. I have enough saved to pay for the shipping, memory card ($135.00), and the other accessories remote release and battery pack ($300.00). This camera will replace my current Nikon D50 DSLR body. The D50 will, most likely, be sold to pay for a new pro-quality lens.

I will make paying this loan off one of my highest priorities. I can easily make the payments from my normal salary and will use part of the revenue generated by having the better equipment to pay this loan off as soon as possible. Since I live in Kansas there is a 20% interest rate cap. I have set the interest rate at the maximum my state allows.

My personal credit is low ?E? due mainly to a credit-counseling agency that my wife and I signed up with years ago. At the time we had too many credit cards, most with small balances and small credit lines, but a couple with higher limits and balances. We worked with the credit counselor in order to pay off the cards in a timely manner. The deal was that we paid them an amount of money each month sufficient to make the payments on the cards and they handled the rest, supposedly making the payments on each card. In exchange for this we were given very low interest rates from the credit card companies. After five years of paying the counseling agency we found out that many of the cards had been charged off since the counseling agency never made consistent payments. Since then we have paid off all but one of the cards and have been making payments per an arrangement on the last one. Since they were ?charged-off? they will remain as showing delinquent even though we have paid them off.

We were naive and allowed them to take advantage of us but we have made right with our obligations to the credit cards. I hope that you can look past this past error on our part and help me make the dream of having a full time photography business a reality. Thank you for your consideration.