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Welcome to the NerdWallet Smart Money podcast where we answer your personal finance questions

and help you feel a little smarter about what you do with your money. I'm Liz Weston. And I'm

Sean Piles. As always, be sure to send us your money questions, call or text us on the nerd hotline

at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730 Nerd. Or email us at podcast at nerdwollet.com. I am continually impressed by how

insightful and smart all of your questions are. So please keep them coming and we will keep answering

them. Also hit that subscribe button if you want more nerdy goodness delivered to your device

every Monday. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. On this episode, Sean and I discuss small dollar loans, their uses, risks, and

alternatives. But first, in our This Week in Your Money segment, we're talking about how to help

local businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. This has been something I've been thinking about

since the pandemic began and everything

shut down. One, as I've talked about a couple weeks back, I was doing some impulse shopping

and I was trying to see how I could make that be more productive for my local economy and help

smaller businesses. But what recently got me thinking about this as well is that there was an

article I read in the New York Times that found that a third of all of the small businesses in New York City may never

reopen. That was according to a report by the partnership for New York City, a business group. So

that's really staggering. If you think about how many local shops you go to for a cute house

plant or a cup of coffee or clothes for your kid, all these places

...