HELOC or not to HELOC

[Wes Brumit]

I've recently seen people giving advise to take out a HELOC as a means to pay your normal everyday expenditures including bills, and at the same time, taking your paycheck from job and applying it every month towards your mortgage payment. The goal is to pay off your mortgage in 4-10 years as opposed to just making the normal payment for another 20+ years. Has anyone done this? What are pros and cons? I did the calculation on my primary property and would have mine paid off in 4.3 yrs instead of 13. Looking for more input before I make a decision

[Kerry Baird]

I sure like the idea of having lines of credit, and using to sweep income from our rentals into the line.  I would move the goalposts from the one you mention, to simply pay off house —> use the equity to buy a rental house, use rents to pay down line, buy another rental with the line and use rents to pay down the line…rinse and repeat.  It will start to snowball with several rentals’ rents paying off the line more quickly.  Use the line as an emergency fund, or to renovate properties as needed.  What a powerful lever!  

We paid off 10 houses, borrowed against them to buy a few nicer houses and plan on doing it again.