Sometimes you just can’t make ends meet, have unseen expenses come up, or you are just upgrading something in your life. There are times in everyone’s life when people need to borrow money. Knowing how to properly borrow money can be the difference between owing money and upsetting the borrower, and being able to pay back the loan with ease.
Organize Your Finances
Before you ask anybody for anything, make sure your finances are in order. Never try to add debt and borrow from someone if you don’t even have your financial situation figured out. This is a major mistake people make and it results in them losing more money than they thought possible, or just simply having a mess that takes time to clean up. After you do this, look at how much you truly want to borrow. You want to make sure you don’t have the money laying around, or realize that you can end up borrowing less. Make sure you know you can pay whoever you are borrowing from back in a reasonable amount of time, without any problems.
Family & Friends
After you are confident and have your finances organized, start thinking about where the best option for money lending would be. If you aren’t looking to borrow an extreme amount of money and it’s reasonable, you could ask family or friends. This is your best option when deciding to borrow money from anyone, because it’s simple and straight forward. It can be as easy as someone letting you pay back the money whenever the times right, to going as far into it as creating and signing a contract. What you always want to make sure you do is have both parties know exactly what is being done, along with every detail. This is so that if there is any confusion in the future, it will be much easier to figure out. When there are debates, especially about who owes who money, relationships can be affected greatly. Make sure you both know what you are getting into. Another advantage would be that your family and friends wouldn’t make you pay late fees, wouldn’t add interest rate, etc. This makes it for a very simple route at getting the money and being able to pay it back quick and easily.
Bank & Credit Cards
If you don’t want to ask friends or family for money, there are other options. Whether you decide to get a loan from a bank, or simply put the purchase onto a credit card, you will be need to shop around for different interest rates. Interest rates can greatly affect how much you end up paying in the long run. Simply shopping around can make the major difference. Once you find an interest rate that you are interested in, calculate it out. Make sure it is something you can afford to pay each month, and see how much you are actually paying in interest rates over the amount of time you plan to have the loan. This helps build the big picture and help you see if it’s going to be a good decision in the long run.
Once you figure out where the money is coming from and have all the details figured out, make sure you recalculate everything. Make sure you know how much it’s going to cost you if you end up having to pay interest on the loan. After you do this, all you want to do is pay more than the required minimum. If your friend wants $100 per month, try to throw an extra $20-50 onto each month. This will show them that you are doing what you can to pay them back, and also trying to pay them back as soon as you can. If you are getting a loan from a bank or credit card, ALWAYS pay more than the minimum. Doing this could be the last thing you want to do, but it’s always the better idea. If you continue to do this over time, you will pay back the loan much quicker than you would have, as well as saving money that would have been put towards interest rates.
When you are thinking about getting a loan or borrowing money from someone, make sure you can afford to do it, as well as making sure that there’s no other way to go about your financial situation. Borrowing money isn’t the smartest thing to do because you never know what tomorrow is going to look like. You could lose your job, have an expense that you have no choice but to pay, etc. Always make sure borrowing money is your last choice, and make sure you are always prepared for anything.