Home Equity loans

[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.