in what you are doing     6.Bank loans     7.Venture capital.     I recommend never financing a business with only borrowed money, even if its possible. If youre starting a new business and use your own money or sell equity, you can make your inevitable start-up mistakes cheaply and survive to borrow money later, when you know how better to use it.     My general rule is that you should borrow less than half of the money you need, especially if youre starting a new business. If youre expanding an existing business, make sure that you can handle the cash payments necessary to repay the loan even if business isnt as good as you hope. In other words, its usually more dangerous to borrow too much than too little. If you have to raise nearly all the money from others, I recommend selling equity instead of borrowing.     Now lets look at each of the most likely funding sources for new and expanding businesses in more depth.       1. Money From Your Personal Savings     Most businesses are financed, at least in part, with personal savings. Sure, its hard to save money, but this form of financing has so many advantages, its worth some effort. Incidentally, savings dont necessarily come from a bank account or piggy bank. Lots of entrepreneurs sell or refinance a house or some other valuable property to come up with cash. (This subject is covered in more detail below in     Starting a business with your savings is the quintessence of the capitalist idea. As the entrepreneur with capital, you hire people, purchase equipment and ideally create profits. Its a long and honored tradition. Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller and, more recently, Steve Jobs of Apple Computer all started with at least some money from their own pockets and ended up creating industrial empires. While chances are your goals are more modest, the idea is pretty much the same.     If you finance a business with your own money, you wont have to worry about making loan payments or keeping investors happy. Think of it this way. The more you borrow, the more you increase your fixed operating costs-making it more difficult to survive the slow periods and mistakes almost every business faces.     Another reason to start a business with savings is that you enhance your borrowing capacity for the future. The inventory, fixtures and equipment you purchase with your cash investment are treated as assets should you later apply for a business expansion loan.     Of course, not everybody is lucky enough to be able to start or expand a business entirely from savings. But there are at least two ways you may be able to increase the amount of money you can put into your business.