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Borrowing money and then investing it — smart or nart?
I will use 10% of this 20K to pay the loan back on an annual basis agreement An annual payment of 0.8% ($2,000 / $250,000) is nowhere near large enough.  The interest alone is going to be well over $10,000 (and probably closer to $20,000 on an unsecured loan), so you need to plan for at least a $20,000 - $30,000 annual payment, depending on the terms (length and interest rate) on the loan.   But in general... is this sustainable/safe?  Essentially what you are doing is using leverage to increase the amount you can invest.  While this is fantastic when the market rises, it can go horribly wrong when the market goes down.  Generally it is unwise to fund a risky (meaning there are large swings in return) investment with a risk-free (meaning you'll always make a payment) loan. If you want to see what could happen, forecast a 20% market drop and see what you are left with (obviously you'll need to make the loan payment out of your balance since you won't have any gains to pull from).  An average of 10-12% over a long period of time is reasonable, but the variance can cause the return to be anywhere from -40% to +40% in one year.  Can you afford those losses?   Here's an actual example: If you were to invest $250,000 in the S&P 500 in January 2000 with an 8% interest-only loan, your next three years' returns would be: After three years, assuming an interest-only payment of $20,000, your balance would be just over $100,000, you'd still owe $250,000, and you'd still be making $20,000 in interest payments.  If your loan interest rate was 25% (which is not unreasonable for an unsecured loan), you'd be bankrupt after 3 years - you'd still owe $250K but could not make the interest payment. No, this is not a good idea.  The only time you should borrow money to invest in when you have control over the returns.  So if you wanted to start your own business, had a stable business plan, and had much more certainty over the returns, the borrowing money might be plausible.   But borrowing money to do passive investment is a huge mistake.