Individuals who have taken out a home equity line can often find themselves in a financial bind.  Their variable rate can rise and cause their monthly payments to rise as well.  These rising payments and interest rates are causing for financial pain to many homeowners.  

Many homeowners have chosen to cut back and face the rising payments, but fear that the rising payments will only continue to grow.  Many decide that they will refinance their first mortgage and pull out enough money to pay off their home equity loan.  This is known as “cash-out” refinancing.  Many people use this method to pay off their variable rate credit lines.  Other homeowners are taking a chance and calling their lenders.  They are asking for something they never knew was possible-converting their variable rate to a fixed rate.  Lenders are not advertising this option but if you confront them with the idea, they are more than happy to help you out.  They are able to do this quickly with no appraisals, no credit checks, no title or closing costs and no fees.  

Some banks are also able to change your line of credit into a multiple tax-deductible financial planning choices.  You can take different lines of credit and convert them into fixed-rate or variable-rates.  Different loan amounts can be converted to fixed-rates for a specific period of time to help you pay for individual projects.  For example, you can take a $50,000 variable-rate credit line and convert $30,000 of it into a fixed-rate loan for five years to pay for education. 

J.P. Morgan Chase and Citibank home equity groups allow customers to divide their credit lines into several different groups with different terms, rates and at no additional costs.