When you find yourself in trouble with a load of credit card debt, there are a number of options that you can choose to pursue to fix the problem. If you have some equity built up in your home, you may be able to utilize it to eliminate your credit card debt through a debt consolidation. This strategy is relatively simple and it can provide you with a number of benefits.
How it Works
In order to make the strategy successful, you will need to apply for a home-equity loan or a mortgage refinance. With either option, you must have some kind of equity built up in your house already. If you use a mortgage refinance, you will use the new mortgage to pay off the old one and then you’ll be left with some extra cash. If you use a home-equity loan, you will keep your existing mortgage and then receive cash from your home-equity loan.
Once you receive the extra cash from either the mortgage refinance or from a home-equity loan, use that money to pay off your credit card accounts. At that point, all of your credit card accounts will be consolidated into your new loan. You’ll make one payment every month until the loan is paid off.
Smaller Payment
One of the primary reasons that the strategy makes sense is because it can often give you a much smaller payment to work with. With a home-equity loan or new mortgage, the loan will be amortized over a period of somewhere between 15 and 30 years. The interest rate on the loan is also much lower than what you pay to a credit card company. This makes your monthly payment much smaller by comparison.
Tax Savings
Another reason that many people decide to take this approach is because it gives you a major tax break. When you use a home-equity loan or a mortgage refinance to pay off your debt, the interest that you pay becomes tax deductible. Any interest that you pay to credit cards is not tax-deductible. Once you transfer that debt over to your home-equity, it becomes tax-deductible. This allows you to not only save money on the interest, but you also get to save money on your taxes.
Using this strategy can help save you money and simplify your life because you only have to worry about a single payment each and every month. If you have equity to use, this should be a strategy that you consider.