Here goes with my financial advice. I believe it's simpler than it sounds and just requires you to get your interest rates from all of your accounts in order to make your choices. First suggestion: do as celticmoon suggests and fix that $515K first mortgage immediately! As I'm sure you're aware, the fixed variable rates of now are worse than a year or two ago, but much better than the 12-19% that they were in the past. In my opinion, fix it now and pay for any closing costs out of your savings, which is presumably earning the worst interest rate. Speaking of....what savings rate is your $15K earning? If it's less than 9% (almost a sure bet), and you have liquidatable cash in assets (which you say you do) to cover an emergency fund, then using that cash to invest in your house is giving you a 9% rate of return in your house investment, which is far better than the 3-4% of a typical savings account. If you choose not to do that, then I present my second suggestion (which I still think you should consider, w/ or w/o the $15K in the equation) DH and I just went through a similar process, although with one house, and we paid off a motorcycle and a timeshare (each at ~9%), rather than CC debt. This plan mirrors our own, with different dollar amounts: Roll both HELOCs into one and LOCK your rate up now. In my opinion, it's only going to go up. You should be able to get a much better rate with a higher consolidation balance (we got 7.5% by consolidating our two loans along with our original HELOC). 65K + 30K = 95K = 11.9% of the first house or 19% of the second house. If you keep your loan:value ratio below 20%, you'll get a better deal on rates. You may even ben required to keep it below 20%; I'm not sure. Keep thinking about that. The next option is to add the 25K of CC debt into the HELOC figure, for a total of 65K + 30K + 25K = 120K = 15% of the first house. Close that loan and pay off the CC debt immediately. You're now transferring the 8.9% of wasted CC interest into an investment into your house, in addition to the tax writeoff. The last think to consider is to stick with the 95K HELOC option and pay off the CC bill with your assets. Are any of your stock or mutual funds giving you returns better than 9%? If so, then keep them where they are and do the 120K HELOC option. If they're earning less than 9%, then I refer you back to the concept of my second paragraph. If you take your mutual fund money that is earning less than 9% and pay down your worst mortgage/HELOC/CC rate with that, you're making a huge investment in your house. Now, if you want to sit on your stocks, that's understandable. I hope that my advice not confusing, and that it's helpful to you. Lindsay

Everything I've seen/heard about this is not to cancel credit cards. Cancelling them does affect your credit scores. That said, at one point I had 3 separate credit cards issued by the same bank. I use only one and pay the balance in full every month. I have received letters from the bank requesting that I either use the cards or said cards would be cancelled effective 30 days of the receipt of said letter. I didn't use them, and those accounts have been cancelled. DH hates credit cards and prefers to pay cash for purchases. I did check with the 3 credit bureaus regarding whether the cancellation by the bank for lack of use of those two cards would affect our credit scores. All three claimed that it would not, and I did manage to obtain fax confirmation of that assurance. I did pull reports at 90 days after their cancellation, and our scores hadn't changed. Unless the card company contacts you about cancelling for lack of use, I wouldn't cancel.

I have had a Visa card, (from the bank where I have banked for about 50 years.) I decided to try the Discover card, and stopped using the Visa. Recently I received a new Visa card in the mail, along with info about a fraud protection that would cost $10 a month. I didn't sign up for it, but it showed on my next statement. I went to the bank (I prefer eyeball to eyeball rather than phone calls.) They insisted I MUST have requested it. Also the new card had to be activated by phone, which I did not do, but I found out they had done that for me!! I finally convinced them to remove the monthly charge. I decided I would never use the Visa card again, but I kept it. It came in handy when I went to buy a fifty # bag of sunflower seed, and they didn't take Discover. Haven't used it since and won't go back there to get my Bird seed. I have liked the way Discover card handles things. Then, I got a mailing from them about a Wallet Protection for $3.99 a month. I didn't request that, but there it was on my statement last month. I emailed them saying I didn't request and please remove it. I got a reply right away which said they would remove it as of that day, but would begin "an investigation" into the matter and would go back over my history, which could take 4 months. It was time to pay my bill so I deducted the charge and paid it in full like I always do . Saturday I got a letter in the mail from Discover saying the matter was resolved and the charge was removed. I guess the lesson is: ALWAYS check your statements carefully. and if there is an error, stand up and don't allow yourself to be taken advantage of. I thought it was humorous that the 4 month investigation was done in two weeks! Still using my Discover card. Sue

Credit card numbers can be accessed by crooks so many ways nowadays--not just by someone picking your purse or going through trash; a lot of computer-savvy people steal entire customer database info (like what happened a few years ago with TJMaxx/HomeGoods/Marshalls). Glad the woman could help you. Did she say whether she'd flag that old account for further activity? Unfortunately, the credit card companies never tell you how your account was compromised--by whom, to what extent. A few years ago, I got a letter from my credit card company saying my account had been compromised by a website and that I needed to fill out a form and that my account would be closed and a new one opened (it was legit, not a scam to get personal info). But no one would tell me which website it was so I could stop doing business with it! That account changeover really messed up some of my automatic debit payments, I'll tell you, even tho the credit card company said everything would be transferred smoothly...