[linda_22003]

There's a lot of good, simple common sense in this article - but as the saying goes, common sense ain't so common.

One thing I'd add: she does warn people away from home equity loans, and I'd amend that a little. We did do a home equity loan, but we used it the way it was intended - to add on a room, update the kitchen and bathrooms, increase the value of the house. We did NOT use a home equity loan to pay off other debt, buy a car, take a vacation.

[wizr]

I paid cash for my "second" home, and I'm still way under appraisal on this one. Now, if I can only get my wife to sell this one, life would be berry berry good.

[Marie]

We're focusing on paying off debt and building savings at the moment. A large part of our problem can directly be attributed to *ONE* moment of weakness that I can fairly credit to both my husband myself. He bought a Harley. And I gave in. It's not unusual for one of us to get stupid, but it's a very rare thing for both of us to turn off the brain cells at the same time. The Harley company helpfully added to the loan all of our other vehicle payments at the time we bought the bike. Now we have a $30,000 loan and a bike that has depreciated down to a value of only $15,000.

Crap.

So we're getting a loan to pay off ALL our debts (except the house), paying our "stupid tax", then selling the bike and applying that toward the loan. Our total debt will drop considerably and we can actually pay it all off.

After everything is paid off we'll start saving to have a house built and put money aside for retirement.

We did get a 15 year loan that I'm stubbornly refusing to refinance no matter what. It would be nice to not have a mortgage payment when we're retired!