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.)"
"I don't have experience with TSP in particular, but they look to be roughly the same as 401(k) loans. If the ""G Fund rate"" is equal to the yield of government bonds, then your main risk is the risk that yields increase, which means the interest you're paying is less than what you would have earned on the investments. Here are some other things to consider: For any car loan, I would borrow as little as possible with as short a term as possible.  To me, the interest savings and additional risks from borrowing from your retirement isn't worth it." If you have a 20,000 balance and a 8.75% interest rate, you should be paying between $145 and $150 in interest each month, with the balance going to principal.  (0.0875/12=0.007292, and that times 20,000 is 145.83; as interest is compounded daily, it'll be a little higher than that.)  If the minimum is below $145, then you are not covering the interest; I suspect that is what is happening here, and they're reporting interest paid that wasn't covered in a prior month (assuming you have some months where you only pay the statement minimum, which is less than the total accrued interest). Assuming you're in the US (or most other western countries), your loan servicer should be explaining the exact amount each payment that goes to principal and interest.  I recommend calling them up and finding out exactly why it's not consistent; what should be happening, assuming you pay more than the amount of interest each month, is the interest should go down (very) slowly each month and the amount paying off principal should go up (also slowly).  EG: Etc., until eventually the interest is zero and your loan is paid off.  It probably won't go this quickly for this size of loan - you're only paying off a tiny percentage of principal each month, $50/$20000 or 1/400th - so you won't make too much headway at this rate.   Even adding another $25 would make a huge difference to the length of the loan and the amount of interest paid, but that's another story.   You will eventually at this rate pay off the loan (at $200 a month for all 12 months); this isn't dissimilar to a 30 year mortgage in terms of percent interest to principal (in fact, it's better!).  $50 a month times twelve is $600; 400 payments would take care of it (so a bit over 30 years).  However, as you go you pay more principal and less interest, so you will actually pay it off in 15 years if you continue paying $200 a month exactly. What you may be seeing in your case is a combination of things: In months you pay less (ie, $100, say), the extra $45 in interest needs to go somewhere.  It effectively becomes part of the principal, but from what I've seen that doesn't always happen directly - ie, they account it differently at least for a short time (up to a year, in my experience). This is because of tax laws, if I understand correctly - the amount you pay in interest is tax-deductible, but not the amount of the principal - so it's important for you to have as much called 'interest' as possible.  Thus, if you pay $100 this month and $200 next month, that total of $300 is paying ~$290 of interest and $10 of principal, just as if you'd paid it $150 each month. If you had any penalties, such as for late payments, those come out off the top before interest; they may sometimes take that out as well. All in all, I strongly suggest having an enforced minimum (on your end) of the interest amount at least; that prevents you from being in a situation where your loan grows.  If you can't always hit $200, that's fine; but at least hit $150 every single month.  Otherwise you have a never ending cycle of student loan debt that you really don't want to be in. Separately, on the $1000 payment: As long as you make sure it's not assigned in such a way that the lender only accepts a month's worth at a time (which shouldn't happen, but there are shady lenders), it shouldn't matter what is called 'principal' and what is called 'interest'.  The interest won't go up just because you're making a separate payment (it'll go down!).  The portion that goes to interest will go to paying off the amount of interest you owe from the time of your last payment, plus any accrued but unpaid interest, plus principal.  You won't have the option of not paying that interest, and it doesn't really matter anyway - it's all something you owe and all accruing interest, it only really matters for accounting and taxes.  Double check with your lender (on the phone AND on their website, if possible) that overpayments are not penalized and are applied to principal immediately (or within a few days anyway) and you should be fine. "The prenup complicates things. The traditional vow of a marriage is ""What's mine is yours, what's yours is mine"". With such a traditional marriage it doesn't matter too much which partner's name something is in, in the event of a divorce the assets of the couple would be considered as a whole and then split. But you have a prenup which is presumably intended to change this traditional arrangement (and may or may not actually be enforceable). I think you are as such right to be wary. I think your only way forward long term is to amend the prenup and/or the legal status of the house to recognize it as a shared asset that you will both be contributing to and that it's value should be split in some way in the event of a divorce. In exchange you should probably be contributing some or all of the cash pile you have from selling your house to the common pot. Another loan may seem like a good option in the short term but in the long term the appreciation on a house is likely to be worth more than any interest on the loan (assuming you are using an interest rate comparable to commercial mortgage deals), plus any interest may well end up being taxable." "In England, currently and for most of the last fifty years, the standard length of the mortgage term is 25 years. A mortgage can be either a capital-and-interest mortgage, or interest-only. In the former, you pay off part of the original loan each month, plus the interest on the amount borrowed. In the latter, you only pay interest each month, and the original amount borrowed never reduces: you pay premiums on a life insurance policy, additionally, which is designed to pay off the original sum borrowed at the end of the 25 years. No one in England thinks that a 25 year loan has any drawbacks. The main point to appreciate is that the longer the period of the loan, the less you need to pay each month, because you are repaying the original loan - the capital - over a longer period of time. Thus, in principle, a mortgage is easier to repay the longer the term is, because the monthly payment is less. If you have a 12 year mortgage, you must pay back the original amount borrowed in half the time: the capital element in your payment each month is double what it would be if repaid over 25 years - i.e. if repaid over a period twice as long. Only if the borrower is less than 25 years away from retirement is a 25 years mortgage seen as a bad idea, by the lender - because, obviously, the lender relies on the borrower having an income sufficient to keep up the repayments. There are many complicating factors: an interest-only mortgage, where you pay back the original amount borrowed from the maturity proceeds from a life policy, puts you in a situation where the original capital sum never reduces, so you always pay the same each month. But on a straight repayment mortgage, the traditional type, you pay less and less each month as time goes by, for you are reducing the capital outstanding each month, and because that is reducing so is the amount of interest you pay each month (as this is calculated on the outstanding capital amount). There are snags to avoid, if you can. For example, some mortgage contracts impose penalties if the borrower repays more than the due monthly amount, hence in effect the borrower faces a - possibly heavy - financial penalty for early repayment of the loan. But not all mortgages include such a condition. If house prices are on a rising trend, the market value of the property will soon be worth considerably more than the amount owed on the mortgage, especially where the mortgage debt is reducing every month, as each repayment is made; so the bank or other lender will not be worried about lending over a 25 year term, because if it forecloses there should normally be no difficulty in recovering the outstanding amount from the sale proceeds. If the borrower falls behind on the repayments, or house prices fall, he may soon get into difficulties; but this could happen to anyone - it is not a particular problem of a 25 year term. Where a default in repayment occurs, the bank will often suggest lengthening the mortgage term, from 25 years to 30 years, in order to reduce the amount of the monthly repayment, as a means of helping the borrower. So longer terms than 25 years are in fact a positive solution in a case of financial difficulty.  Of course, the longer the term the greater the amount that the borrower will pay in total. But the longer the term, the less he will pay each month - at least on a traditional capital-and-interest mortgage. So it is a question of balancing those two competing factors.  As long as you do not have a mortgage condition that penalises the borrower for paying off the loan more quickly, it can make sense to have as long a term as possible, to begin with, which can be shortened by increasing the monthly repayment as fast as circumstances allow. In England, we used to have tax relief on mortgage payments, and so in times gone by it did make sense to let the mortgage run the full 25 years, in order to get maximum tax relief - the rules were very complex, but it tended to maximise your tax relief by paying over the longest possible period. But today, with no income tax relief given on mortgage payments, that is no longer a consideration in this country. The practical position is, of course, that you can never tell how long it might take you to pay off a mortgage. It is a gamble as to whether your income will rise in future years, and whether your job will last until your mortgage is paid off. You might fall ill, you might be made redundant, you might be demoted. Mortgage interest rates might rise. It is never possible to say that you ""can"" pay off the loan in a short time.  If you hope to do so, the only matters that actually fall within your control are the conditions of the mortgage contract itself. Get a good lawyer. Tell him to watch out for early-redemption penalties. Get a good financial adviser. Tell him to work out what you will need to pay in additional premiums on your life policy if you are considering taking an interest-only mortgage. Try to fix your mortgage rate in the first few years, for as long as possible, so that in your most vulnerable period, with the greatest amount owing, you are insulated against unexpected interest rate fluctuations. Only the initial conditions can be controlled, so it might be prudent to take as long a term as possible, even though a prudent borrower will leave himself room to reduce that term, and a prudent lender will leave room to extend it, in case of unpredictable changes in the financial circumstances. In England, most lenders are, in my experience, reluctant to grant mortgages for less than 25 years. That is simply a policy. Rightly or wrongly, the borrower usually has no choice about the length of the mortgbage term. Hence, in the UK it can be difficult to find a choice of interest rates based on differing mortgage terms. I am aware that the situation in the USA is rather different, but if I personally were faced with the choice I would be uncomfortable about taking on a short term mortgage, because of the factors I have outlined above." Short term investments, treasuries, current accounts. To what end would you want to break the law? Why would you think it is beneficial to you in any way? The reason for these limitations is to protect people who have no financial reserves and are not sophisticated investors from making dangerous and risky investments with the little money they have to invest. You need to remember that there's no guarantee of principal with these loans and the rate of default is pretty high. From my own personal experience with Lending Club (and I've only invested in A and some B-rated loans) - rate of default is about 10%. This may be a nice exercise in microlending - but if you want to put all your savings into this, you're taking a huge risk. Risk which is completely unjustified since not only the returns are pretty low (again - from my aforementioned experience: <6% APR, you take higher rate loans - you get higher rate of defaults), but they're also taxed as ordinary gains. Why would you not, instead, invest in a more conservative bond or bond/stock mix fund which will pay you dividends that will get preferential tax treatment and appreciation would be subject to capital gains tax? No reason. And the limitation on who can invest in Lending Club is there for exactly this purpose - to weed out people like you who have no idea of what they're doing. 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. Im creating a 5-year projection on Profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet and i\m suppose to use the LIBOR (5 year forward curve) as interest rate on debt.  This is the information i am given and it in USD.  Thanks for the link.  I guess its the USD LIBOR today, in one year, in two years, three years, four years and five years