Borrowing money for a semi-urgent medical expense
The best option would be to have the dental office allow you pay in installments. That would be probably the cheapest and most convenient way. When high amounts are involved - many medical offices are flexible with payments and allow spreading over long period of time, so you should check it out. Otherwise, credit cards would probably be the most expensive loan, but you should shop around and compare the rates offered to you, it is hard to guess would you may get. "I am a bit confused here as to how a 4K loan will negatively effect your credit score if payments are made on time.  FICO scores are based upon how well you borrow.  If you borrow, pay back on time, your score will not go down.  Perhaps a bit in the short run when you first secure the loan, but that should come back quickly.  In the long run it will help improve your score which seems like it would be more important to you. Having the provider finance your loan will probably not show up on your credit unless you fail to pay and they send to collections. If the score is so important to you, which I think is somewhat unwise, then use a credit card.  With a 750 you should be able to get a pretty good rate, but assume it is 18%.  In less then 9 months you will have it paid off, paying about $293 in interest.  You could consider that a part of the cost of doing business for maintaining a high credit score.  Again not what I would advise, but it might meet your needs. One alternative is go with lending club.  With that kind of score, you are looking at 7% or so.  At $500 a month, you are still looking at just over 8 months and paying about $100 in interest.  Much less money for improving your credit score. Edit based upon the comment: ""My understanding is that using a significant portion of your available credit balance is bad for your credit, even if you pay your bills on time."" Define bad.  As I said it might go down slightly in the short term.  In three months you will have almost 33% of the loan paid off, which is significantly lower then the original balance.  If you go the credit card route, you may be approved for quite a bit more then the 4000, which may not move the needle at all.  Are you planning on buying a home in the next 90 days?  If not, why does a small short term dip matter?  Will your life really be effected if your score goes down to 720 for three months? Keep in mind this is exactly the kind of behavior that the banks want you to engage in.  If you worship your FICO score, which gives no indication of wealth then you should do exactly what I am suggesting."
"I didn't say ""not at all available outside of work hours"".  I said ""not checking work email"".  If something urgent comes up at the office when I'm out where it makes more sense for someone to call me and ask for help, sure, they can call, and I'll answer if I can, or get back to them when it's reasonably convenient to do so.  I'm not going to waste my non-work hours looking for work to do, though; if it's not urgent, it waits until the next time I'm in the office." Something I wanted to posit: Do you have a life insurance policy, either taken out yourself or offered through your company? Many of these policies will pay out prior to the death of the covered individual, given statements by medical professionals that the person has a terminal illness or condition. The benefit, once disbursed, can be used for almost anything, including to pay down a mortgage, cover medical bills and other care expenses, etc. If you have such a policy, I urge you to look into it; that is the money that should be used for your end-of-life care and to ease the burden on your family, not your retirement savings. Your savings, if possible, should be left to continue to compound to provide your wife with a nest egg to retire with. Second mortgages were also a popular way for home buyers without a down payment to borrow 100% of the money, but avoid certain extra fees if they borrowed all the money from a single lender. For example, to borrow $100,000 on a house would incur something called PMI (private mortgage insurance).  So to borrow $100,000 to buy my house, my payment might be $800/month, but I would have an additional $100/month of PMI to pay.  (These numbers are totally made up and not based in math in any way) So instead of that, borrows might get a first mortgage for $80,000 so they don't have to pay the PMI and get a second mortgage for the difference.  This can be beneficial if the second mortgage payment is less than the PMI for borrowing 100%. As far as I know they aren't as easy to get these days, like any loan you need to be qualified and I think 100% financing is probably harder to come by.  The negative connotation is no worse than any other loan.  I am personally against borrowing money, but if you had big medical expenses, major home repairs or some other emergency I could see it justified.  Probably not for a big vacation or for new car though. Regarding Medical insurance premiums - The premiums are only part of the cost. You need to know if you have a deductible, your out of pocket maximum and what co-pays you have. If you take medications on a daily basis you need to account for those costs. Some programs allow you to put money aside pre-tax to pay for these known expenses.  I would split Emergency fund / general savings into two lines. You can set a goal to save X months worth of expenses as an emergency fund, but the general savings will be whatever is left over from the rest of your budget. Unless you have a goal for the savings: car, home... That is your bill because the services were performed for you.   You still can negotiate with the doctor however.  Suggest that while you aren't willing to pay the full share, you will pay the negotiated amount he would have actually gotten from the insurance company (or some fraction thereof).  Doc did make a mistake, but you are very much liable for it. The odds could very well be in your favor, even when the insurance company expects profit. What matters to you is not the expected amount of money you'll have, but the expected amount of utility you'll get from it: getting enough money to buy food to eat is much more important than getting enough money to be able to buy that fiction book too. The more money you have, the less a dollar is worth to you: consequently, if you have enough money, it's worth spending some to prevent yourself from getting into a situation where you don't have enough money. "The question should read: ""Borrow huge money for speculating"". This is a bad idea on many levels. The lowest rates available will be from time-limited credit card offers, followed by broker margin accounts. Personal loans are going to be higher. My advice: if you insist on throwing your money away, go to Vegas with $40k. At least you'll get some complimentary food and drink." In personal finance circles this is called an Emergency Fund. There are many opinions about how big it needs to be but most seem to come in around 3-6 months worth of your average expenses. Any more than that and you're going to loose money to inflation, less and you will start having problems if you get laid off or have a medical issue.