<p>Some HELOCs have a penalty against paying off the loan early and other assessments. I’d check carefully and see what you’d save by paying off early rather than just paying on schedule. We actually prepaid each month more than the mortgage payment (e.g. if we were supposed to pay $1500, we paid $2000), so we paid off our mortgage before it was due. Our interest rate was 5% as well. We could have refinanced but opted to just accelerate payments and were happy to be done.</p>
<p>Most NPNC rates I’ve seen have minimums which are higher than the amount we owe, and paying any kind of closing costs would wipe out the savings. Plus, refinancing is a headache.</p>
<p>I don’t think prepayment penalties are legal in my state, and I’ve never heard of one on a HELOC. We pay extra every month on both our first mortgage and our HELOC.</p>
<p>“The Slate credit card web site says “The fee for balance transfers is 3% of the amount transferred, with a minimum of $5.†” So maybe that deal isn’t available any more”</p>
<p>According to that link you posted, it still is. Look at the second sentence, it says:“For this introductory offer, pay no balance transfer fee within the first 60 days from account opening.” So you just have to do it fairly quick. It is an awesome deal.</p>
<p>Our bank makes us pay the closing fees that they covered upfront (basically $300 for the appraisal) if we close our HELOC within three years of opening it. Not really a prepayment penalty, but its still $$.</p>
<p>How the he$$ did I miss that??? :-/ </p>
<p>^^That’s probably what the guy said who ran into our neighborhood sign (and brick wall) last night.</p>
<p>Meeting with an expert next week on teacher retirement options…</p>
<p>@dragonmom good luck with the meeting - you may see a clear cut ‘winner’ on your options. Make sure you understand clearly, and don’t sign up for anything like annuity w/o making sure you understand each option and all the pros/cons. My MIL had a very clear cut teacher retirement option ‘winner’.</p>
<p>Let us know how the meeting goes. Share any good tips with us.</p>
<p>I looked into HELOC a bit more. It is not quite as tax advantageous as a mortgage. </p>
<p>NJ gives a number of options for retiree’s to consider</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/pdf/factsheets/fact05.pdf”>http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/pensions/pdf/factsheets/fact05.pdf</a></p>
<p>I would like your opinions on account aggregation products which I’ve begun looking into in order to better quantify our expenses and asset mix. I have always been (irrationally?) leery about giving passwords of all my financial accounts to any one entity and have hence missed out on the benefits they can potentially offer. I’m now playing with a few where I have accounts, like bank of america and T-Rowe Price, and even an independent site, mint.com. Vanguard seems to have discontinued their linked accounts, and I couldn’t make headway at the site they seem to have subcontracted this service to. </p>
<p>So far I’ve only put in info of my bank where I don’t keep the bulk of my assets, and a bunch of credit cards and utilities, but no investment or retirement account data. For some reason, I can’t connect my Sams Club credit card which have the bulk of my charges and would be necessary to get a reliable indicator for expense categories.</p>
<p>If you’ve been doing this for a while, what did you find most useful, and do you have any other words of wisdom or warnings? Does the product you use have the ability to get things like overall asset mix when you have linked funds and etfs from different companies? Thanks.</p>
<p>My next door neighbor is very nice and a little anal. She has kept track of each of her expenses. This came in handy when we were buying the place next door. When I asker her how much she pays for electricity? Water? HOA fees? </p>
<p>She said, “Let’s take a look. I have a record of every purchase I have made since 1999.”</p>
<p>Made it very easy to get a finger on our future housing costs. :)</p>
<p>My neighbor uses Mint and she told me to give it a try.</p>
<p>I started signing up. Got well into the process…but when it came time to start entering passwords…I did not want to do it. A little too much info I had to give up. That is just me. My neighbor likes it.</p>
<p>We just use an excell spreadsheet. I can tell you how much we spent on every utility for the past 20 years. Easy peasy. Takes two minutes per month.</p>
<p>Dragonmom, you don’t have candy bars on your expense list? What good is an expense list without candy bars? :)</p>
<p>? DStark?</p>
<p>I am joking. My neighbor does keep track of her cost of candy. </p>
<p>My chocolate monthly allowance is 2 Lindt dark sea salt bars. In months of extra stress I go to one square every wo days. Is that what you meant?</p>
<p>Dstark, I can give you that kind of detailed info on our expenses, down to commuting costs, how much we spent on books, and how much we spent on gifts while on vacation. Have been using Quicken since 1996. We have an ancient version and have never used the capabilities to download statements from other financial institutions, credit cards, etc. I reconcile the credit card statements every month. Call me paranoid. 
We don’t even do banking or purchasing on our cell phones. Works for us, though this is a huge YMMV.</p>
<p>No. I was joking. I don’t expect people to keep track of their candy costs.</p>
<p>I would have a very hard time eating the amount candy you are eating.</p>
<p>You couldn’t eat one Lindt square every three days?</p>