this not be the ideal thing to do? EX: $100,000.00 HELOC with an $80,000.00 balance on a mortgage with rates of 5% and 5.75% respectivly. The HELOC intrest is also deductable is it not? (both on same, primary property) October 3, 2008 Doug @ 5:58 pm : @Heloc and Rich Wright, think about what your mtg statements could look like after the first year (I'm ball-parking it here so, really, look at your amortization to see what I'm talking about in detail). In my case, my mtg payments in the first year lower my PRINCIPAL around about $1000. Now, if I were to have paid that $1000 up front, that would have knocked a year off of my schedule just in real dollars. So paying that $1000 up front already puts me about one year ahead of schedule - of course, I realize that another $1000 payment will not knock the same amount of time off the schedule since the principal payments the next year will equal more than around about $1000, which is true the next year and the next. HOWEVER, that extra $1000 DOES still knocks SOME time off - more than just a month but less than a full year. So, you ask, how does the HELOC come into play? In an EFFECTIVE way? Well, you take a comfortable amount from your HELOC to pay down a chunk of your mtg. Then, when your paycheck comes in, you could put all or some of it into your