My wife is putting up a fight on what I think is a pretty obvious solution. We are looking to put our house up for sale but I need a new roof, window and door replacements, new laminate flooring and possibly some updates to the kitchen. These are things that will drastically improve our selling ability in such a poor market.
I suggested taking a home equity loan of roughly ,000, our house appraisal is at 220,000 and our mortgage remaining is 163,000. I won’t get back the full ,000 but I can get a lower interest rate than our 19.9% on our credit cards and I can deduct the interest paid.
My wife has a warped way of thinking and doesn’t want the home equity loan because it reduces the amount of money we would collect at selling. My point is that it is better to pay it all off at selling and have less money in our pockets than to carry that cost on our credit cards which already have 2,500 on it and the 19.9% interest.
Am I missing something or should I just remain the household financial adviser?

(more…)