If you are fortunate to still be living in your home, consider yourself lucky. Now don’t press your luck by using your home equity to consolidate your credit card bills and pay them off. In this article learn why paying off your credit card debt, personal loans, or medical bills with a home equity debt consolidation is generally not a good idea.
Credit card debt, personal loans, and medical bills are unsecured debts. There is no collateral given to secure these debts. You can walk away from paying these bills and not be at risk of losing anything. That doesn’t mean you should, that is just a quick example of what unsecured means.
Your home on the other hand is secured. The mortgage is secured by the property. If you fail to make your payments, you will lose your home.When you tap into your home equity or take out a second mortgage and pay off your credit card bills, you convert your unsecured debt and turn it into secured debt. Now if you cannot afford to pay back the equity loan, you can lose your home.
With the way the economy is these days, that is not a good gamble to take. You may think you have a secure job today but that does not mean it will still be there tomorrow. Millions of people thought they were secure and now they are out of work and have been for several months.
This is why paying off your credit card debt using your home equity as a debt consolidation loan is not a great idea now. There are other ways to consolidate your debts and lower your monthly payments without putting your house at risk. You should take the short time to learn a little more about these options.