When I was in my 20's (about 30 years ago now, before my career in IT had began) I went to the dentist in a lot of pain. They did x-rays and said all 4 of my wisdom teeth needed to come out. It would need surgery and would cost 750 per tooth, plus the anaesthesiologist costs. I was working for a low hourly wage in the IT section of a book store at the time, and could not afford that. They then said "no probs, we also offer loans for the procedure". I went home, took some more painkillers and looked into the loan. The interest rate and term would have made it cost thousands more.
(The bookstore I worked at paid low, but had one perk I loved: they let us borrow some of the books so we could learn what was good and give advice to customers. I took the job mainly for this reason, as I was really into 3D modelling and animation and thought I could teach myself. Alas, my old 486 PC could barely run the demos.)
That week I went to my bank to see if they'd give me a loan at better rates than the dentist, and to my shock they could, and would lend me up to 5k as a personal loan, and they said I could use it for anything. I went for it and got the loan.
I didn't go back to the dentist though. Went straight to a computer store and bought one of the latest Pentium PCs and my first ever dedicated GPU (a Matrox Millennium), then stopped at the pharmacy and bought the largest pack of ibuprofen they had.
I got a dream job doing 3D modelling and animation some months after that, transitioned into multimedia programming and have been a software developer ever since, so the ROI was pretty good. And I still have all my wisdom teeth.
(The bookstore I worked at paid low, but had one perk I loved: they let us borrow some of the books so we could learn what was good and give advice to customers. I took the job mainly for this reason, as I was really into 3D modelling and animation and thought I could teach myself. Alas, my old 486 PC could barely run the demos.)
That week I went to my bank to see if they'd give me a loan at better rates than the dentist, and to my shock they could, and would lend me up to 5k as a personal loan, and they said I could use it for anything. I went for it and got the loan.
I didn't go back to the dentist though. Went straight to a computer store and bought one of the latest Pentium PCs and my first ever dedicated GPU (a Matrox Millennium), then stopped at the pharmacy and bought the largest pack of ibuprofen they had.
I got a dream job doing 3D modelling and animation some months after that, transitioned into multimedia programming and have been a software developer ever since, so the ROI was pretty good. And I still have all my wisdom teeth.