Are Schools Teaching Students About Interest Rates?

With this past Tuesday marking the first day of school for the majority of students across Canada, the Synergy Merchants team members couldn’t help but think about the days when we were in classrooms. Mathematics, as you can imagine, was a strong suit for our licensed funding specialists. But to a person, no one can remember being taught about interest rates in math class.

Aren’t interest rates among the most important things you could learn?

It’s literally something we all need to understand in order to live our lives. Between the repaying of our student loans and paying off of credit cards, mortgages and car purchases, interest rates are practically unavoidable. However, math class – as far as we know – is void of discussing this topic at any level of education. We sincerely hope we’re wrong about this and that the modern-day math curriculum has changed.

At Synergy Merchants, we have a colleague who is actually a teacher. After experiencing this year’s first day of school earlier this week, he reminded us that math was his least favourite subject in high school. “It made no sense to me,” he recalled, “And seriously, when ever in our real lives has knowing algebra and trigonometry ever mattered? What they should have taught us, back in high school, was how interest rates work.”

Our colleague reminded us that 2016 was the projected year in which he would have paid his student loan off in full, had he stuck to making minimum payments. He graduated in 2001. “The crazy part is that, all these years later, I’m still confused as to how banks determine what we owe them,” he said, “The math makes it so difficult to know how much you’ll have to pay over time.’

Can people avoid paying interest altogether?

For most car and home buyers, the answer is “no”. But that doesn’t mean that interest can’t be avoided in some areas of our lives. For Canadian business owners who are looking to grow their businesses, we offer a way that they can get their hands on much-needed financing for their businesses without having to worry about interest rates!

Instead of charging an interest rate, we charge a one-time fee. Our merchant cash advance program provides the answer to the question “What will I owe you in full?” This is something that can never be answered by a loan officer at a bank. As our colleague pointed out, with interest rates, it’s difficult (actually, impossible) to know what the full and complete repayment of a loan will be before the loan is actually paid off.

With a merchant cash advance, our clients are given the exact amount of their repayments before the money is even given to them. That way, they can make informed decisions as to whether or not taking the cash advance is the right move for them. As well, it gives them the peace of mind in knowing that no matter how long it takes for the advance to be repaid, they will never pay a penny more than the total amount of the advance and the one-time fee given to them on day one.

For more information about our merchant cash advance program or to speak with one of our licensed funding specialists to get a free, no obligation quote, simply call Synergy Merchants at 1-877-718-2026 or email us at info@synergymerchants.com.