We've always thought of our home equity line of credit (HELOC) as something we could fall back on "if", so we've been paying it down like mad since we bought the house. Started off at 45,000.00 balance and now we're down to 10,000 plus change since we bought the place in Feb 2006. Not too shabby.

We found out yesterday that we're going to have to pay excise tax on something that we thought was taken care of last year. I think it's going to be somewhere between 10 and 20 thousand. Maybe more. I told BJ that, considering our circumstances, maybe we should use the HELOC to pay this tax, since the interest rate is so low and the payments would be low.

We called the company that owns the HELOC and they said that our available credit is ZERO. ZIP. NADA. They said that they've frozen most HELOCs due to the economy and the declining home value.

I decided that I needed more depressing news, so I went to zillow.com to see what our house value is. Here's the graph:


NICE! We've lost about 100k in value! Thankfully, we're not upside-down between the value and what we owe.

On the thankful front, between my bonus (of which I found out today is based on the top performance rating- go me!), my vacation pay out and my severance pay, I'll be getting just 300.00 shy of a year's salary on my birthday (the end of this month).

Even more thankful, I have a sweet little boy who doesn't mind his mama kissing and holding him all the time. Maybe I should have called him George. <- that there is a Daffy Duck cartoon reference.

He even puts up with me trying to change his sleeping schedule.



And most thankful that BJ and I have now spent 8 days together in the house 24/7 (except for errands) and we haven't tried to stab each other with a fork.

Yup, I still have a very thankful and hopeful attitude.