[jessibird]

Hi all-Does anyone know much about or have experience with opening an HOme Equity Line of credit to fund part of the process. My DH is very against this and I don't think either of us know why he is so against it??? Is it a bad thing to do??? You can PM if you have personal info you can or are willing to share with me

Thanks a bunch!

[Jessi_76]

Hi Jessi! Congratulations on adopting again!!! I see you are going to China this time. How exciting!

My dh and I used a Home Equity Loan to pay for part of our adoption costs, my parents took a HE loan to pay for part of it, and we still have an open HOE line of credit that we will need to use (it's either that or CCs). I highly suggest a HE loan over a line. While a line is good because you can use it as you need it, the interest rates will be higher. With a HE loan, the rates will be lower, and you can get a term up to 20 years, making your payments more manageable, however, you are then stuck with a payment that will never change.

I think the biggest problem with a HE loan (or line) is that it's secured so you are putting your house on the line if you cannot make the payments. When you use CCs for travel, etc., you may end up only paying the minimum or close to it, and being stuck in an endless cycle of debt, BUT, you will NOT lose your house. It is unsecured and much safer.

Hope this at least helps a little.

Best of luck to your growing family!
Jessi

xoxoxo

[DPline]

We used one for our second adoption. Not knowing why your husband is against it, my thought is just to make sure you have a plan to pay it back. Ours was/is (we still have it in case of an emergency) a much lower interest rate than credit cards and the pay back terms are pretty lenient. (In that it doesn't have a huge monthly payment required.) We made payments on it until we got our adoption tax credit and used that to pay it off.

The only downside I can see is as Jessi_76 said, you are potentially putting your house on the line should you not be able to pay it back.

Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions about what we did.

[mommamarci]

We had planned to use HE loan to pay for our adoption, but in this crummy market, we got turned down. We have at least 15-20k in equity and only wanted to borrow about 8. They are getting much more strict with how much debt they will allow against a home. We ended up borrowing against dh's 401k.

So, my advice: don't count on this unless you have an immense amount of equity or absolutely no other debt.

Good luck!

[KellyKA]

If we could take out a HE loan we would, but things are too difficult in our area right now. I think its a great idea and an easy way to minimize cost and payments. Just think of the financial differnce of paying a really low rate over 30 years vs. a much higher rate over the next 3 years. In the end you may end up paying more but its streched out over a much longer period of time vs. somthing quick. Loan I have looked into need to be paid back in 2-3 years at 12% intrest which in my case would be 500-600 per month, where an extra 30k added to our morgate would be minimal, around 100 per month. As long as you can make the payments and dont go upside down on your house in my opinion there is nothing wrong with a HE loan!

[wynnekj9967]

I'm a banker here in Texas, so I really don't know much about HELOC's in your state. But with a HELOC the rates are variable, so right now they are really low. Now as prime does go up, the rates will go up also. I know with my bank, you can borrow against it and then you can lock it in at anytime twice in one year. So lets say, you have a 25K HELOC and borrow 10K, you can lock the 10K in at a fixed rate. Also, the interest can be tax deductible, where as you can not write off the interest on any other loan or loc. If you have any more questions, please let me know.