If you have no cash at all, as ever, life can be difficult, and you will need some cash to prime the pump, between $500 and $1,000. Look amongst your possessions for what you can sell by classified ads in your local newspaper, carboot sale etc and turn those assets in cash.

Go to your nearest bank and open a high interest savings account with, say, $500.

Remember, you are not asking the bank for credit or current account facilities that might lead to them making a loss on you by default: you are putting down hard cash - no risk to them.

After a week or two, apply to the bank for a personal loan using your savings account $500 as security. Once again, the bank is taking no risk, so that a loan of $500 should be forthcoming. Once granted, you should take this loan of $500 in cash. Keep the repayments of the loan to a minimum by going for as long a period as you can get, say, 2 years. This should cost you less than $1 per day to satisfy the regular repayment plan.

With the $500 cash in hand from the first bank loan, go to another bank and do exactly the same as you did with the first bank: open a high interest savings account, then after a week or two apply for a personal loan using your savings account of $500 as security for a personal loan of $500. Keep going through this procedure until you have half a dozen banks holding your savings account as security for a personal loan. With the final bank, the cash from the personal loan can used to help repayments on these six loans.

Repay these loans as fast as you can and on repayment of each loan, the savings account used as security will then be available for your use.

What has this excercise cost you at the end of the day?

Remember, your savings account at each bank is earning interest, so the cost to you will be the interest earned minus the interest charged on the personal loans, and the original $500 you started with will return to your pocket.

The next stage of this project is to go to the original first bank and arrange another loan of say, $500, this time secured on your home. If you rent your property the bank may want some form of security, in which case use the savings account with the same amount you wish to borrow deposted in it. The bank just might make you the loan without any security; after all you have just proved to them that you can handle and satisfy a loan.

Do the same with the other five banks in the original set-up, repay the loans as soon as possible, and you will have on your credit rating the information that you have had 12 different loans, all of which have been repaid in a satisfactory manner, and repaid well before time...

This shows prospective lenders that you have a first class credit history. This whole excercise could take you 6 months to achieve; as little as 2 months if you have no previous bad debts or County Court Judgements (CCJ's) recorded against your credit record. If you do have CCJ's, see our guide on how to remove CCJ's.

Having established a good credit rating and good relationship with the banks, apply for their credit cards.

To begin with, the credit limits will be low, but by borrowing money off them and repaying it, up to the given limit of your credit card each month, you will be able to request that they up your limit. As you can see, this excercise is similar to your original plan: borrow small amounts of money, pay it back fully and on time. The credit card company can then see that you are able to handle the borrowing of money and will increase your credit limit.

Over a period of time you could find yourself with credit limits of up to $5,000 on each credit card: these money borrowing excercises will speed up the process.

Do protect your hard earned credit rating.

Some people may think this whole programme is a lot of effort just to aquire a basic credit rating, in which case only the first half of the excercise should be considered.

By going through the whole excercise to enhance your credit rating will allow you to enter the next stage of the overall strategy, to be able to borrow tens of thousands of pounds from your credit cards or banks.

Why would you need to do this?...

To be able to get your hands on large amounts of short-term cash to help you make serious money in a programme to increase your personal wealth.