the Cost of Personal Loans

The service was a small "personal use loan" from my usual bank. All service charges were rolled into the interest I was charged as there was no out of pocket expense to get things rolling.

It's a full service bank so they offer everything from basic savings and checking plans to assistance in international investments.

Crunched some numbers, figured for what I was doing I'd be better off taking out a loan than pulling money out of my investments for . Went to the loan officer at my bank, said hi how's it going, here's what I need. He already had most of my info on hand from before so it took next to no time and I had the money by the end of business that day. Couldn't be easier. But then I've been at that bank for over a decade and my credit is pretty good.

The cost of borrowing money is interest. The more of a risk you are, the more the bank's going to want to be compensated for loaning you money, so the more interest the bank charges.

Beware variable interest rates. They may have great interest rates when you sign them, but they go up and down pretty much arbitrarily, meaning you'll never really know exactly how much you'll end up paying out in the long run. And it could be really a lot.

And don't speculate in the stock market with borrowed money. Not only can you lose someone else's money but you can end up owing much more than you invest if you try to leverage an investment with borrowed money. Leverage being when you use a little money to control. Buying stock options is one kind of leverage.