I wish SA allowed you to tag someone or reply directly to comments. I wanted to reply to all of you - thank you for your thoughts and feedback. I've loosely followed DR for years, and he's gotten us out of ever having to file bankruptcy and kept us out of the poor house. i 😍 snowballs - but we aren't 20 anymore. Good, bad or indifferent, we are WAY behind on our savings needs (sure, they probably be called goals - but at 45, I'd say they are needs!). If I wanted to go the slow, painful - yet fulfilling - method, I would. I've done it before, I can do it again. But I don't think time is on our side. Our life is so different from even three years ago. I am a grandma now. My parents are trying to buy a home, at their age, in this current market. I could go on and. on and still convince no one that this is what's right for us, right now. And that's okay. It's PERSONAL finance. I am here to be kept honest - and after we make our decision, I'll still need to be kept honest!  

If consolidate, our focus will move to paying down our new mortage and my student loans. While I would love to get some reprieve there (at least stop the crazy interest and let me pay the loan off!), I know it's my responsability. I've mocked out a budget through the remainder of the year. One example, we will go from saving $8 - 10K automatically in our Credit Unions to saving/investing a minim of $2500 a month (two personal escrow accounts, each of us will have an IRA and put $300 a month in that, invest $500 a month, and then continue to put that $8-10K away. And this doesn't count 401K contributions. 

If we go the Refinance route - we will pay an additional $1500 a month towards principal... and pretend we have a 15 year mortgage. When interest rates come back down, we will refinance to a real 15 year. 

All this to say, I've finished looking at our options and wanted to lay them out (more for my sake). 

In all scenarios, I can pay more than comfortably pay $4500 a month towards the house.

Refi with existing mortgage company

Details: 5.62% rate, 30 year fixed conventional - payment $3098; will pay $1500 per month to principle

HELOC with CU

Details: variable, current 6%, interest only payments for 10 years (would be about $700 right now, but can seriously balloon); interest and principle for additional 20 years. Felt like if we go this route, I'd make the $700 plus $1300, PLUS $1500 each month and could pay it off way earlier! 

HE Loan

Details: 6.99% 12 year fixed, payments will be about $1300

In any of the options, we are touching just a smidge of our equity. In fact, it's about the amount we used as our downpayment three years ago. I say this, because we aren't being greedy and we are not trying to touch the fake equity as I like to call it. We are touching the initial equity we had when we closed on the house. 

Which ever option we choose, I am looking forward to getting so serious about savings and paying off the mortgage! AND closing all of those darn cards.  

More to come!

We have an opporunity to refinance our house, using our equity to pay off every single cent of debt we owe (except my studen loan). I know it's not the best market to refi right now, since rates have gone up like crazy... but we have about 130K in debt (need to update side bar), and it will take us forever to pay off using the snowball method. 

I am very aware that putting all of our eggs in one basket could be scary for us. My mortgage right now is $1785, it would go up to $3100. But my MINIMUM payments alone are more than the difference. 

If we do this, we have to 1000000% change our ways. No more debt, no more credit cards. If we do this, we have to pay $1500 a month extra on the mortgage (we plan to stay here for at least the next 10 years), and look to refinance to a 15 year when the market calms down (2 years?!). 

All our bills are paid every month... we can afford either scenario. Both have dumb tax tied to them, but one allows us to speed up the process. And honestly, lowering the sheer number of bills we pay each month, will be REALLY nice. 

I am looking into one other scenario, a seperate HE Loan. Hopefully will have #s to compare tomorrow.