Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with borrowing

How to get money to improve home

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:02:43 -0800

What are my options for borrowing money for home improvement? My wife and I need to build a new garage and want to add a bathroom to our house. Total expected expense of approximately $60-70k.

We both have excellent credit. We would exceed any credit requirements. I make a good bit of money. We just don't have $70k in a bank somewhere. We have $100k in equity in our house, which is valued at approximately $400k. We have just one mortgage that was refi-ed 4 months ago. Based on neighborhood, we will likely get the money from this project back out (but this isn't our motivation for doing it; I'm just saying that is not a factor).

Well, my wife went and asked Bank of America about it, and her recitation of the conversation boiled down to that there was no way we could get the money right now. She said the banks are not giving out loans for this kind of thing.

That blows my mind. I'm an absolute sure thing. With my income, I could change nothing about my living and pay $1-2k a month that would easily pay off a $70k loan. Why wouldn't someone lend me the money?

So, what are my options to get $70k to fix my house? Or am I not going to be able to get a HELOC or 2nd mortgage or whatever in this economy? If I am working with an architect and a general contractor, are there ways to set up financing like you would with a car if those two don't offer it themselves?

I'd like to know what my options are for borrowing that kind of money; who would be good sources of this; and what types of things can I say or do to convince a lender that there is virtually no risk in lending me money? I'd also like to get a general sense of how the amount factors in to the decision [The garage ($30) has to be done. The bathroom is just a desire].

Various other demographics which might be relevant: live in affluent and stable neighborhood in DFW area of Texas, married, no kids, dual incomes (one substantial, one good), perfectly clean credit, willing to pay premiums to get it done.

I set up a dummy account for any question or leads: moneyborrowquestion@gmail.com

Thank you.

Internet Loans during a credit crunch?

empath — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:25:48 -0800

How is the credit crisis affecting places like prosper.com? Would it be smart to borrow/loan money there in an environment like this? With banks seizing up and me having some extra cash, would it be a smart investment to loan money to individuals directly? What about people having a hard time getting a loan from a bank? Is anyone out there using it right now?

Which source of $$$ to use for medical school?

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:46:53 -0800

Paying for medical school -- which money to use? I'm starting medical school in Canada in September. I've got about $50k in US mutual funds and treasury bills, $15k in a Canadian RSP (which can be used to pay for education if repaid at a certain point), and the banks are offering a line of credit at prime + 1%.

The question is: how do I start paying for school and living expenses? Withdraw and use the investments, and then move to the line of credit when they're exhausted? Use the line of credit, and wait for the investments to grow in order to repay the LOC? Are the investments likely to grow in the next few years? Buy lottery tickets?

Improve my pan-linguistic wordpower

unSane — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:12:18 -0800

What words should English steal from other languages? Apropos of this post on the blue I'm looking for words like SchadenFreude, flaneur, kabuki or gestalt which are not part of the current English lexicon, have no direct analog in modern English, but express useful, important or interesting concepts.

(Many of these words seem to come from technical disciplines or have strong cultural overload -- that's fine with me).

401K Borrowing: Ever even an OK Idea?

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:55:51 -0800

I have tons of debt and am just not getting ahead nor falling behind, either, but.... I'd like to use my 401K to solve this problem. Of course, there's I have a house that, due to the slightly declining market and the fact that I had no down payment when I bought it a couple of years ago (seemed like a good idea at the time), has zero available equity and a fairly large monthly mortgage payment. I also have lots of credit card debt, which would be nearly completely wiped out by taking $50K out of my 401K. The credit cards that would be paid off would constitute about $1200/month in payments that could be exchanged for (what I assume would be) lower payments back into the 401K, including the fact that I would be paying myself the interest, even though it is after taxes. I know that borrowing against your 401K is never advised, but I feel my situation may make that knee-jerk reaction a little too hasty. I believe if I were out from under the mountain of credit card debt, I'd be able to refinance my mortgage and get it cut by nearly $500 pretty easily.

Anyone been in a similar situation? Anyone done the 401K borrowing where it worked out well? Any other inventive solutions you can think of?

Thanks, Hive Mind!!

ethical repair

yonation — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:00:41 -0800

so i'm "borrowing" a wireless connection from my neighbors... after having done this with no problems for almost four months, it's now become a pattern that every fifteen minutes i have to repair my connection using winXP's "repair" function. this works great until i have to do it again. what gives? [please no comments on sharing connection... i am aware of all issues]

How much can the person I'm borrowing wireless from see?

urania — Tue, 23 May 2006 08:08:29 -0800

Okay, so I often use free wireless connections...whether they be in coffee shops or occasionally my neighbor's open network. My question is, how much of what I post online/what sites I visit can be seen? Sometimes I post things I don't want to share with my neighbors, also I check email. If other open wireless network users CAN see what I'm looking at, how do I prevent it? The network I use is belkin 54g. This shouldn't be a problem soon, as I am getting my own connection. When I had my own, I left it open so others could share. I assume my neighbor is doing the same thing? But for now, I would like to know that my neighbors can't see the pix I send my long-distance boyfriend and/or what I post on our shared journal. Is this unrealistic? Thank you for your help.