Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
As long as you use them for a specific purpose and pay them off religiously, they're better than getting a regular loan because you can write off the interest. But in my opinion, they should be used for a particular "project" and not on consumer purchases. I used them to do the rehab of my house when I bought it, and I thought that was a good purpose for it. If you get one and buy a bunch of stuff and default, your house gets auctioned off to some other happy family.
As opposed to a home equity loan, though, I'd recommend a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit). If you get one of those, you don't have to have an approval process to borrow against it. You just pay it up and down as you need it. Since it's a secured line of credit (using your house as collateral), the interest rates tend to be quite low in addition to being deductible.
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What I'm looking at would add about 300 dollars a month for a 10 year home equity loan. Main purpose is to finish basement which a ballpark cost is going to be around 20k and then pay off the students loans the wife and I currently have which is around another 20k. I'm paying well over 300 right now on those loans so the payment isn't the issue.
I didn't realize there was an approval process though. So with finishing the basement, I will need to have the plans and the estimates before they would give me the money?