that you can get your HELOC balance back down to $0 this month. Or, maybe your are comfortable sending a bigger chunk from your HELOC, say $2000 or $3000, to pay down your mtg and then spend a couple of months only sending the minimum payment for your mtg while your paychecks pay down your HELOC to $0. Then start all over again. This begs the question of what about an emergency or a desired vacation that might equal a few thousand dollars, or even a layoff? Well, that gets to the question of how much your HELOC should be and how deep you dip into it each month. Someone brought up the question of taking $5000 from the HELOC to send to the mtg company. If one does so, one should also have a buffer ABOVE that amount REMAINING in the HELOC to draw upon. This gets to YOUR specific situation. If you can only get a HELOC that is $5000 then by no means should you send all of it and all of your savings and checking account to your mortgage company. If you did so, and if you had an emergency you would then, theoretically, have to borrow money from other sources to handle that emergency. The idea is not to get in over your head - only work with small amounts for starters and back off if you see the HELOC balance owed getting too high and/or uncomfortable for you. If you first started by sending