Ask yourself these questions before you refinance your home equity loan or line of credit:
1. How Much Will it Cost to Refinance? - Figure the costs of refinancing and the increase or decrease in interest rate over the course of the loan. There are many refinance calculators available online that you can use for free to help you calculate whether or not the cost is worth it.
2. Are You Refinancing For More Favorable Loan Terms? - Sometimes people refinance for better loan terms, like a fixed rate, a shorter term, like from 30 to 15 years to payoff. Sometimes, if refinancing doesn't necessarily save you much money, but you are moving to better loan terms, it can be worth doing the refinance anyway.
3. Are you including the loans closing costs in the loan balance? - If so, realize that not only are you paying those closing costs, but you are also paying the interest on those closing costs over time. Make sure you add those numbers into your calculations when figuring whether or not it's worth refinancing. Add the interest costs and payments for the rest of your current home equity term and compare them to the interest costs of the proposed refinance loan. This will help you determine if there is a worthwhile savings.
4. Will you need your home equity line of credit in the future? - There are definitely benefits to having a home equity line of credit available to you in the future. If you don't have much in savings, and have money available in your home equity line of credit, you may want to consider keeping it. If you refinance it, then if you run on hard times and need to borrow money from your home's equity, you will have to take out a new home equity line of credit. You might not have the option of taking out a new home equity line of credit when you need one.
By: CL Haehl -