Get your mates to lend you money

If the international credit wobbles are making you a little bit nervous about lending from the banks, a new Australian peer-to-peer finance site called Fosik could be worth a look.

According to Springwise, Fosik is primarily designed to facilitate lending between friends or family members by providing loan documentation and a means of recording interest rate and debt levels.

It also provides people with some extra cash to set up their own mini-finance operation by lending to strangers at agreed rates through the Fosik portal.

Fosik is the first Australian site to provide an online service that has existed for some time in Europe and the US, most following the model created by Zopa in Italy.