We really got F’d on this one the other day! Seriously, it was going sooooo well. I really thought we fenagled ourselves a great deal. I mean, it still IS a great deal in that we are saving roughly $200 a month currently, BUT here is where they got us (and i didn’t even see it coming!):

THEY FROZE OUR HELOC ACCOUNT!!!!

You might be saying to yourself, so what? You’re still saving $200 a month. This is true, and i’m thankful for that. BUT consider what this now means:

1. It was frozen because the market values of the houses in our neighborhood have now gone down! And the bad part is i don’t know by how much (according to my bank of course) as I have to await some elusive letter in the mail stating the amount. ARRGHHHH.
2. We have now lost access to our entire Checking and Savings account! Remember, we put 9k into it to save the additional interest each month with the belief we could take it out anytime we wanted…and this was working fine until now. Imagine your accounts having a $0.00 balance starting right now. Scary, eh?

So, did “Operation HELOC Savings” work? YES. It saved us $$$. BUT it also F’d us in the fact we “lost” all our savings and checkings, and we NOW have refigure out how to move on securely going forward, as well as start building the aforementioned accounts back up … all the while paying our bill and mortgages at the same time.

On a good note, we (or really I), learned a big lesson here: Spend more time reading what I’m signing as there ARE loopholes for both parties. Seriously, i didn’t see this one coming!