Dude, credit cards and venture capital at a time like this is your best friend. Trust me. Banks are able to give you $1 on credit for every penny that they have.
CitiBank was able to leverage themselves 1:150 before financial crisis! Look at them now! Do you know what this means? This means, as an example, they had in their vaults $1000 in cash, and gave loans for $150,000 for each of these $1000 in the vaults! That is why they are where they are now. The entire United States of America has been operating like this.
I have fallen back on my credit cards, at first mainly because I kept forgetting to pay since I had 15 of them. Then I once fell so much on one they called me about one credit card and wanted to whipe out my debt ($10,000 at the time) if I pay them only $1800!
Then it hit me. They NEVER had this money to begin with. It's all FAKE DIGITAL inflation / leveraging, which is why this financial crisis is huge, and probably only the beginning of it.
Ever since Credit cards and loans have become my best friend. Don't believe me? Ask some of the worlds largest investors.
PS
Well this was all in response to Chris sentence about credit cards, but you edited.