"This little light of mine..."

Well, I can see a little light at the end of the tunnel. It might just be the flicker of a match, but it's still some light.

For the past two weeks I've been calling banks, mortgage brokers and checking online for refinance options. Some way to get our payment lower so we can ride this thing out without losing the house. We could make the higher payment, but we would have absolutely no money to spend. And, with two teenage boys, you always need money to spend. The problem is, our rate with Chase is very competitive and we wouldn't be saving any money by refinancing...only if we went interest only....and we really didn't want to do that with our mortgage.

I talked to the nicest mortgage broker yesterday. He is a little familiar with this case, as it's been in the papers and on the news since September. He said he feels very strongly that Chase, our mortgage company, will wind up offering some type of settlement. They've done it in the past for cases that while not like ours, the end results were the same. He said that it would be much easier for Chase to forgive part of a loan they already have, than to get them to cut a check for us to pay off a loan that's with another lender. I told him that I agreed, however, it won't do me any good if my house is in foreclosure, or I can't afford to heat it.

He suggested a low interest home equity loan to consolidate our other debts. We have enough equity to get one to pay off my Pacifica (even though it's a lease) and our two small credit card balances and the four wheeler we bought. He recommended that I call a banker he works with. I called her and she had an amazing offer. An interest only home equity line of credit. With what we need, the payment on the interest only loan would be a little over a$100 a month. Well that's a saving of about $500 a month. We only have to make up around $300, so we can apply $200 to the principal each month and our payment will go down down down. Then, if something comes up and we have a tough month financially, we can just pay the interest and it won't reflect poorly on our credit.

I got a good night's sleep last night for the first time in a long time. I love that man, and I've never even met him. Oh, the lady at the bank was very nice too.

Wish me luck!