If you were broke and needed a loan but with a good credit score, do you borrow a hundred dollars so you can pay it back quick or 20,000 so you are comfortable for a while?

You open a 20,000 Line of credit, than put $100 on it and pay it off.

If you can live off $100 than the 20k is superflous.

That being said if you can invest the 19.99K into a dividend stock and earn $100/month plus principle & interest on the 20k you might be better off doing that.

More or less what the rich people do

I wasn't broke but my bank offered me a stupid personal loan at about 3% interest. I took the maximum allowed at $25,000 and invested it in SPY a little over a year ago. I have two more years to pay it back. I've just been paying the minimum.

Depends but probably 20,000. Because asking money from banks is too much of a hassle that I really, really don't want to go back again if, say, I need another 100. I have a suspicion most countries' banks hate the underwriting process too, so they also likely won't lend a small amount

Me? I'm never taking on a giant debt like that unless I have no other choice. So the answer by default is minimum amount owed, period.

That being said, you're asking as much about thought process as the actual direct answer. So!

Generally, owing 20k isn't being comfortable. The reason for that is that if you can afford to just keep on paying back the 20k, plus interest, you aren't in a situation where you need to borrow the smaller amount in the first place. You have the income that you could wait for your next paycheck or whatever unless it was an emergency. If it's an emergency, you'd obviously make the decision based on whatever that emergency was.

But, overall, there's zero comfort for me in knowing that A: the money sitting in the bank can never draw enough interest to match the interest it costs; and B: even if I didn't care about that, what happens when the payments on it become out of my reach?

See, I've been hit by the shit stick a few times in my life when I also carried debt. The first time, it was a few hundred on a credit card, plus my car payment that allowed me to look for work. I could only afford one of the two, and that meant my credit score got trashed after the shitty ass company that held the credit refused to accept anything other than paying on time with at least the minimum payment.

That fucked me hard for years.

Next major time, it was similar. No car payment this time, but a fucking mortgage. Mortgage, plus a different credit card, plus a personal loan from a friend meant to get me through until I could finish physical therapy and get back to work.

Guess which one had to be left unpaid. Now, in this case, the credit card company did work with me. They were actually really damn good in that regard. Good enough that the six months of physical therapy that turned into almost a year unemployed (because the fucking piece of shit administrator of the company embezzled enough that the parent company just shit canned anyone with benefits entirely, then shut the company down) still had them giving me a like leeway.

But, eventually, with the decrease in pay I had from starting over with a new company in an already shitty pay scale job, something had to give. And I ain't fucking over a friend that helped me save my family home and then still kept me going when I couldn't pay shit. So, there went my credit score again.

So, that's why I can never imagine a situation in which I voluntarily take on debt of any size that isn't absolutely mandatory to survive. I know too damn well how fast income can go from 60 to zero faster than a Ferrari hitting a wall.

There's no life in which 20k of debt that I'm responsible for is "comfortable". Hell, if I won the damn lottery and had 10 million sitting drawing interest for me, I wouldn't take on that much debt for myself.

That's before the practical financial side of things where paying for the right to have money sitting around is not an optimal choice.

It took me damn near twenty years to come back from my last debacle when I actually had minimal debt (just the mortgage and a line of credit from a bank that time, but I hadn't fixed my credit from the time before). I managed to get the line of credit repayed eventually, but suffered for it, and it still fucked my credit score because of how long it took. I'm finally ata place where I could borrow 20k in a real emergency, but I would have zero hope of keeping it paid every single month for the years it would take to repay (yay for being disabled, right?)

For real, debt is damn near a phobia for me. Like, part of the process of rebuilding my credit score was borrowing money I knew I could repay all at once if I had to, then carrying that fucking weight. Then repeating the process a handful of times. I had fucking nightmares the entire time I was in debt during that. Had to spread each time out because of the anxiety it caused.

20k in debt? I could hit that lottery, be ready to pay it back the next day, and still wouldn't be comfortable

Edit; coming back a few minutes later to note that just thinking about it has me stressed lol

I have had a credit score of 750 or more for years and the biggest loan anyone would ever give me is $300. :/

If I could get a $20k loan, I wouldn't even care if I could pay it back. I'd take it.

As others said it depends on many factors.

What are interest rates like? If they are low and economy is strong, then absolutely 20k and then invest in a very stable index fund or CD that pays out more as long as it's more than the interest, that's not really because you need the money though.

If you're truly broke though? No loan is a good idea unless you know when you can pay it back. I'd say a credit card, but unless you know you're going to have $100 in 2 weeks to pay it back, well, that's how credit card debt racks up. If you can't afford to pay it back then you can't afford it.

so your broke but you have income? Basically with all loans unless your doing economic shenanigans like rich people do now a days you generally want to use it either for an investment that will pay off in the long run (like a house) or something you need and will last for over the life of the loan and has payments you can make (like a car).

No one will give you a 20,000 loan if you are broke