Lowest Interest Options for Short-Term Loan
"Also talk to your bank(s) or credit union(s); first one of mine I looked at offers an unsecured loan at 7% variable, and a signature loan at 7.5% fixed, no hidden costs on either. You might do better. Also check store credit. Sears used to offer 1-year-0% financing on appliances if you signed up for the store's card at the time of purchase, and if you have the discipline to reliably pay it off before interest hits that's a hard deal to best. Other stores have offered something similar for major purchases of this sort; do some homework to find out who. (I bought my fridge that way, paying it in month 10.) The ""catch""  is that many people get distracted and do wind up paying interest, and the store hopes that having an account with them will encourage you to shop there more often.)"
A normal FSA also gives you a short term loan: money earmarked is available in entirety immediately, while you repay it every paycheck. This is interest free, and if you time your large planned medical expenses for January, can be a nice cheap loan. "Depends on how far down the market is heading, how certain you are that it is going that way, when you think it will fall, and how risk-averse you are.  By ""better"" I will assume you are trying to make the most money with this information that you can given your available capital. If you are very certain, the way that makes the most money for the least investment from the options you provided is a put.  If you can borrow some money to buy even more puts, you will make even more.  Use your knowledge of how far and when the market will fall to determine which put is optimal at today's prices.  But remember that if the market stays flat or goes up you lose everything you put in and may owe extra to your creditor.  A short position in a futures contract is also an easy way to get extreme leverage.  The extremity of the leverage will depend on how much margin is required.  Futures trade in large denominations, so think about how much you are able to put to risk. The inverse ETFs are less risky and offer less reward than the derivative contracts above.  The levered one has twice the risk and something like twice the reward.  You can buy those without a margin account in a regular cash brokerage, so they are easier in that respect and the transactions cost will likely be lower. Directly short selling an ETF or stock is another option that is reasonably accessible and only moderately risky.  On par with the inverse ETFs." "Dave Ramsey would tell you to pay the smallest debt off first, regardless of interest rate, to build momentum for your debt snowball.  Doing so also gives you some ""wins"" sooner than later in the goal of becoming debt free." "With (1), it's rather confusing as to where ""interest"" refers to what you're paying and where it refers to what you're being paid, and it's confusing what you expect the numbers to work out to be. If you have to pay normal interest on top of sharing the interest you receive, then you're losing money. If the lending bank is receiving less interest than the going market rate, then they're losing money. If the bank you've deposited the money with is paying more than the going market rate, they're losing money. I don't see how you imagine a scenario where someone isn't losing money. For (2) and (3), you're buying stocks on margin, which certainly is something that happens, but you'll have to get an account that is specifically for margin trading. It's a specific type of credit with specific rules, and you if you want to engage in this sort of trading, you should go through established channels rather than trying to convert a regular loan into margin trading. If you get a personal loan that isn't specifically for margin trading, and buy stocks with the money, and the stocks tank, you can be in serious trouble. (If you do it through margin trading, it's still very risky, but not nearly as risky as trying to game the system. In some cases, doing this makes you not only civilly but criminally liable.) The lending bank absolutely can lose if your stocks tank, since then there will be nothing backing up the loan." In france you have several options: A good place to starts with: 1% as of may 2015 interest is low, but's money is 100% liquid (you can withdraw antime). You got slightly superior interest rates, and have to wire at least 45€ a month on it. It gives you lots of advantages if you use it to buy a house.  You cannot use the money unless you close the account, so it's not as flexible. You get 2% rates as of may 2015 which is quite good. [If you open this account now, it's only 1% making it not so attractive. Look at Life Insurance Instead.] This one is useless: interest rate is too low. I highly recommend this one. You can open it with 0 cost with several online banks (ing, boursorama, ...) Minimum deposit should be around 1000€. Rate is flexible, but usually higher than what you get with the others. You shouldn't withdraw the money before 8 years (because of taxes, but you can still do it if you need). You can add money on it later if you want. Because of the 8 year duration, it's better to open one as soon as you can, even with the minimum amount. Open an PEL + Livret A + Life insurance. Put the minimum on both PEL + life insurance. Put every thing else on Livret A. If you are 100% sure you don't need some of the livret A money, send it to PEL. [As of 2017, PEL is not so attractive anymore. Bet on the Life Insurance instead, unless your account was open prior to this]. Makes sense so long as you can afford it while still maintaining at least six months living reserves. The sooner you own outright a decreasing asset the better which should be considered when selecting your loan term. However, with today's low rates and high performing stock market you may want to consider allowing that money to be put to better use. It all depends how risk adverse you are. That emotional aide of this decision and emotions have value, but only you can determine what that value is. So - generally speaking, the sooner you own an asset of decreasing value the better off you are, but in exceptionally low interest rate environments such as today there are, as mentioned, other things you may want to consider. Good luck and enjoy your new ride. Nothing better then some brand new wheels aye. Ben already covered most of this in his answer, but I want to emphasize the most important part of getting a loan with limited credit history. Go into a credit union or community bank and talk to the loan officer there in person. Ask for recommendations on how much they would lend based on your income to get the best interest rate that they can offer. Sometimes shortening the length of the loan will get you a lower rate, sometimes it won't. (In any case, make sure you can pay it off quickly no matter the term that you sign with.)  Each bank may have different policies. Talk to at least two of them even if the first one offers you terms that you like. Talking to a loan officer is valuable life experience, and if you discuss your goals directly with them, then they will be able to give you feedback about whether they think a small loan is worth their time. I would put about a month's worth of expenses in the highest-paying savings account that you find convenient to access. For the rest, I recommend Ally's High-Yield CDs — specifically, the 5-year option. Normally 5 years would be way too long to commit short-term savings to a CD. However, the Ally CDs allow you to break them for a penalty of only two months worth of interest. If you look at the graph below (from when the rates were 3.09% APY), you can see the effective interest rate at every possible time you break the CD early. Doing the math, if you can keep your savings in the account for at least four months, it will outperform any other current FDIC-backed investment that I am aware of, for the length of time the money was invested.  (credit: MyMoneyBlog) You may also want to consider short term, low risk investments. Rolling Certificate of Deposits can be good for this. They don't grow like an Index Fund but there's 0 risk and they will grow faster than your bank. For my bank as an example today's rates on my Money Market is 0.10% APY while the lowest CD (90 days) is 0.20% APY with a 5 year going up to 0.90% APY. It's not substantial by any stretch but its secure and the money would just be sitting in my bank otherwise. For more information look at: What is CD laddering and what are its pros and cons? The safest investment in the United States is Treasures. The Federal Reserve just increased the short term rate for the first time in about seven years. But the banks are under no obligation to increase the rate they pay. So you (or rather they) can loan money directly to the United States Government by buying Bills, Notes, or Bonds. To do this you set up an account with Treasury Direct. You print off a form (available at the website) and take the filled out form to the bank. At the bank their identity and citizenship will be verified and the bank will complete the form. The form is then mailed into Treasury Direct.  There are at least two investments you can make at Treasury Direct that guarantee a rate of return better than the inflation rate. They are I-series bonds and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). Personally, I prefer the I-series bonds to TIPS.  Here is a link to the Treasury Direct website for information on I-series bonds. this link takes you to information on TIPS.  Edit: To the best of my understanding, the Federal Reserve has no ability to set the rate for notes and bonds. It is my understanding that they can only directly control the overnight rate. Which is the rate the banks get for parking their money with the Fed overnight. I believe that the rates for longer term instruments are set by the market and are not mandated by the Fed (or anyone else in government). It is only by indirect influence that the Fed tries to change long term rates. I struggle to see the value to this risk from the standpoint of your mother-in-law.  This is not a small amount of money for a single person to lend to a single person ignoring your personal relationship.   Right now, using a blended rate of about 8% and a 5 year payment period, your cost on that $50,000 is somewhere in the neighborhood of $11,000 with a monthly payment around $1,014. Using the same monthly payment but paying your MIL at 5% you'll complete the loan about 3.5 months sooner and save about $5,000, she will make about $6,000 in interest over 5 years against a $50,000 outlay. Alternatively, you can just prioritize payments to the more expensive loans.  It's difficult to work out a total cost comparison without your expected payoff timelines and amount(s) you're currently paying toward all the loans.  I'm sure a couple hours with a couple of spreadsheets could yield a plan that would net you a savings substantially close to the $5,000 you'd save by risking your mother in law's money. A lot of people think personal lending risk is about the relationship between the people involved, but there's more to it than that. It's not about you and your wife separating, it's not about the awkward dinner and conversations if you lose your job.  Something might physically happen to you, you could become disabled or die.  Right now, that's an extremely diversified and calculated risk taken by a gigantic lender. Unless your mother in law is very wealthy, this is not nearly enough reward to assume this sort of risk (in my opinion).  Her risk FAR outpaces your potential five year savings. IF you wanted to pursue this as a means of paying interest to a family member rather than the bank, I'd only borrow an amount I budgeted and intended to pay within this single year.  Say $10,000 against the highest interest loan. No. It's perhaps a bit obvious, but with the shorter term loan you would be contractually obligated to pay the higher monthly payment. By paying double on the longer loan, you retain the flexibility to pay less. And you would pay less interest if you truly doubled your payment on the longer loan. This is because you'd be paying off more of the principal more quickly. (But you'd also be making a slightly higher payment than on the shorter term loan.) You can play with the amortization calculator at Bankrate to understand this. Excellent question and it is a debate that is often raised.  Mathematically you are probably best off using option #1.  Any money that is above and beyond minimum payments earns a pretty high interest rate, about 6.82% in the form of saved interest payments. The problem is you are likely to get discouraged.  Personal finance is a lot about behavior, and after working at this for a year, and still having 5 loans, albeit a lower balance, might take a bit of fight out of you. Paying off such a large balance, in a reasonable time, will take a lot of fight. With the debt snowball, you pay the minimum to the student loan, save in an outside account, and when it is large enough, you execute option #2.  So a year from now you might only have three loans instead of five.  If you behaved exactly the same your balance would be higher after that year then using the previous method. However often one does not behave the same.  Because the goals are shorter and more attainable it is easier to delay some gratification.  The 8 dollars you are saving in your weekly gas budget, because of low prices, is meaningful when saving for a 4K goal, where it is meaningless when looking at it as a 74K goal.  With the 4K goal you are more apt to put that money in your savings, where the 74K goal you might spend it on a latte. For me, the debt snowball worked really well. With either option make sure that excess payments actually go to a reduction in principle not a prepayment of interest.  Given this you may be left with no option.  For example if method #1 you only prepay interest, you are forced to use option #2. "The interest rate is determined by your 401(k) provider and your plan document.  Of course you may be able to influence this, depending on your relationship with the provider.  I'm very certain that prime+1% is not the only rate that is possible.  However, your provider is constrained by IRC 4975(d), which states that the loan must be made ""at a reasonable rate of interest.""   The definition of ""reasonable rate of interest"" would probably need to go to court and I do not know if it has.  The IRS probably has internal guidelines that determine who gets thrown to the dogs but they would not make those public because it takes away their discretion.  Because of the threat of getting pounded by the IRS, I think you will have a hard time getting a provider to allow super high or super low interest rate loans. Note: I am not a lawyer." "I don't want to bother with micropayments, and harassing her for   monthly payments. Alternative approach to lending her $20K, arranging for her to pay you back $x per month, and having to (as you say) harass her for micropayments. Instead, you give her the $20K, and she sets up a savings account with a monthly direct debit deposit of $x. The bank takes care of the monthly ""payments"" into the savings account, and at the end of the loan period, you've got your $20K, and instead of the bank making interest off your mom, you make some interest out of the savings account."