Here's an interesting trivia question: how can you use an in-place credit line, at a great interest rate, and not at all impact your credit scores or even have it show up on your credit report?  The answer is to borrow from your life insurance policy or policies. 

I'm not much in favor of living much on credit to begin with if it can be helped, certainly not as a way of life, but a sudden great need for credit is just when this makes the most sense - when someone who maintains very healthy credit scores needs to borrow something short term, doesn't want to do so at credit card type rates, and doesn't want to hurt that long-defended credit score. 

As an example of when this might make lots of sense, maybe you live in a condo and don't own a parking space or want a second space to go with the unit and there is one available to purchase.  In downtown Chicago that will run you as high as $50,000.  For most, it's not something you can or want to put on a credit card and refinancing your home to do this might not make a lot of sense, yet most people don't necessarily keep a lot of cash around in their checkbook to seize this opportunity when it comes up.  Perhaps an even better example is the extra amount you need for the down payment on a retirement home or to lend your son to buy his first place.

I can't speak as a loan officer and this is just based on my personal knowledge and understanding, but with relatively little paperwork and hassle, no review or qualification necessary, and almost no time (inside of a week) you can have a loan off your life insurance policy or policies, almost to the full amount of their cash value.  As long as you have had them in place for several years, no doubt those policies have some value.  For most people these policies are only thought of as a source of savings during a desperate thought of cashing them in at some point in a financial crisis (don't do that - remember you can borrow almost the same amount from your own policy and keep the policy in place).  Best of all, borrowing from them does not show up on your credit report (it will reduce their value on a personal financial statement, though) and the interest rate will probably be around 8%. 

There is generally no time-specific requirement for paying back the loan(s), though you will have to pay the interest they otherwise should have accrued at least once per year.  As with all borrowings, of course I will always advocate paying them back/down as soon as possible, even if that means the discipline of establishing a forced monthly payment for yourself. 

If your policies don't yet have much cash value (common if they are small policies or relatively new) a good way to build the cash values up over time is to use them as a forced savings plan by contributing something extra each month or year to overfunding them, which most policies allow - the extra moneys of which are all automatically invested.  Tax planners will tell you that you later have a great tax-free income source in place as well, since the borrowing against future policy values (when years from now they have very large cash values) is all tax free "income" that really never has to be paid back if you play it out so far that you ultimately jus t wait until death for the policy's death benefit to pay off the loan and whatever is left goes to your estate. 

Next time you need a low interest, off-credit loan, dig up your life insurance statement and see if there isn't one already approved and waiting for you.