Thanks for your response. I did fail to mention sound investment opportunites as a perfectly good reason to tap into your home’s equity. A good frined of mine, a single mom, tapped into her home equity line to purchase 3 “fixer” homes over a period of a year and a half. She used the profit from her first to put a new roof on her home and install a new fence. She used the profit on the second one to pay cash for a new car and she stuck the profit from the third into an account for a rainy day. Her home is now in very good repair and the credit line has been paid off. My brother and I once bought a duplex with the “cash advances” from our credit cards. It was a great deal and paid them (the cards) off when we resold the duplex. I have to admit there are some calculated risks so I can’t recommend these tactics to the unsophisticated investor. It’s the people who paid off student loans or bought new cars, motorcycles, pools etc that mortgaged their futures and lost.

Happy investing.

Patrick Wallace

By the way I found your blog via the carnival of creative investing.