Sometimes in business, you need to do some tricky things and be creative to make things work.
After being declined for a line of credit, and exhausting our small credit card limit, I was forced to be creative to get much needed funds in the spring.
I have used a couple methods:
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0% APR offers
I have good credit and plenty of credit cards available which come in handy. When you aren’t using your card frequently, the banks will frequently send you a 0% apr offer. These offers are for balance transfers but you can use them for a 0% loan. Usually, they come with a transfer fee of 3% but if its 0% apr for a year or longer, this translates to a 3% APR loan which is a good deal. Sometimes its for 18 months so thats even longer of a period and a lesser equivalent interest rate.
2. Charging your own credit card
This isn’t ideal, but this past year I depended on 0% credit card offers but only got one! I quickly tried to think of other ways to get cash, and I decided on charging my own credit card.
Our company has credit card processing, so what I did is I took my now (higher limit) business credit card and ran it through our credit card processing. Expensive- and you have to pay the fee on both your company end and you have to pay interest on this money. Ouch. But it works in a fix and for a short term loan. This year if I have to use it again (I hope not!) I will swipe the card, since swiping the card is a lower processing fee charged than entering it online through the portal since it is more risky for the banks.
