Halden / Borrow against your portfolio
You have investments. You have debt. You might be paying 24% on a credit card while your broker would lend you the same money at around 5%, with your portfolio as collateral. Wealthy people have done this for decades. Halden shows you the math in plain English.
How it works
It's called a margin loan when it's at a brokerage. The mechanics are simple, and the whole thing takes about ten minutes to set up at the right broker.
Your stocks and index funds sit in your brokerage account as collateral. They keep growing, paying dividends, and compounding. Nothing is sold, so nothing triggers capital gains tax.
Because the loan is backed by real assets the broker can see, rates are a fraction of credit cards. No credit check, no fixed monthly payment, just a short margin approval inside your account (brokers require at least $2,000 in it). Interest accrues until you pay it back.
Repay whenever you want. The one real rule: if your portfolio falls too far, the broker can sell some of it to protect the loan. That's the catch, and we explain it honestly below.
The math
Type in your real numbers. We'll show what you pay per year now, and what the same loan would cost backed by your portfolio.
Estimates use simple annual interest at the lowest widely available base margin rate (4.9% as of late 2025, rates change). This is education, not advice. Your numbers, your decision.
Where rates stand
The brokers where most people keep their money charge more than double what the low-cost brokers charge to borrow. Same collateral, same mechanics, very different price.
Rates shown are each broker's published base rate for typical balances and are being verified against broker websites before launch. Margin rates are variable, move with the Fed, and differ by balance tier and plan. The gap between low-cost and traditional brokers is consistent; the exact decimals change. Always confirm the current rate on the broker's own site before borrowing.
The catch
It's called a margin call. Your portfolio is the collateral. If the market drops hard and your portfolio falls below the level the broker needs to feel safe, they can ask you to add money, or sell some of your investments to cover the loan. They don't have to ask permission, and it tends to happen at the worst possible moment, when markets are already down.
This is the part the hype videos skip, and it's the reason borrowing against your portfolio wrecks people who treat it like free money. It isn't free money. It's cheap money with one sharp edge.
The fix isn't avoiding the tool. It's borrowing far less than the maximum. A broker may let you borrow 50% of your portfolio. Careful borrowers take 15 to 25% and sleep fine through normal market drops.
Stay under 25%. If you have $50,000 invested, treat $12,500 as your real ceiling, not whatever the broker offers.
Borrow against boring. Diversified index funds fall less in a crash than single stocks. Never borrow against a portfolio of bets.
Have a payback plan. This works as a bridge, not a lifestyle. Know how the loan gets repaid before you take it.
Early access
Calculators, rate tracking, and step-by-step guides for borrowing against your portfolio without losing sleep. Join the list and you'll be first in when we ship.
One email when we launch. That's it.