Loans Among Friends

Here's an interesting idea: loans among friends bypassing the bank (aka, "the man"). Traditionally, these have been informal and fairly difficult to enforce, so I could only really recommend them for the recipient unless the lender had close associates with names like Bruno and Guido. Well, Virgin Money has a solution to formalize this process.

Only downside for the lender: the usury limit in Illinois is a mere 9%. Still, you loan sharks out there could still come out ahead.